Modern web applications often have a nearly insatiable thirst for data. Especially when dealing with structured, hierarchical data, quenching that thirst can prove extremely challenging. Creating and maintaining good web service for both data fetching and data mutations can quickly become a particularly painful problem. GraphQL offers a solution to many of these problems that you will find yourself exposed to, especially when dealing with traditional REST.

GraphQL exposes a queryable schema that supports fetching and mutating your data through a single endpoint, even supporting multiple queries with different schema entry points (root calls) in a single request.

In this talk I am going to ...

Discuss the challanges and common pitfalls when building web services
Discuss the shortcomings of traditional REST
Introduce GraphQL as a remedy for these problems
Present the concept and language specification of GraphQL
Get you familiar with the GraphQL query syntax by example
... And ultimately: Show you how you can use GraphQL to turn Drupal into a powerful data hub
If you are interested in a quick preview of GraphQL on Drupal 8, take a look at this live Google Hangout recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3gMSnaZrp8 (Note: The schema structure and module features have changed since this recording).