In a post to his site Matthew Weier O'Phinney shares some notes about GraphQL usage that he's gathered over the last week or so of working with it.

The last week has been my first foray into GraphQL, using the GitHub GraphQL API endpoints. I now have OpinionsTM.

The promise is fantastic: query for everything you need, but nothing more. Get it all in one go. But the reality is somewhat... different.

He talks about his experience working with the results and the amount of data manipulation that was required to actually get at what he wanted. He shares the query he used, the result the API provided and what he ultimately wanted. He also mentions the less than useful documentation, issues with pagination and an update based on comments of pulling data from the GraphSQL API versus the REST API.

The PHP Town Hall podcast, hosted by PHP community members Amanda Folson and Ben Edmunds, has posted their latest episode - Episode #56: GraphQL is better than REST.

Amanda Folson and Ben Edmunds are joined by Phil Sturgeon to discuss what’s new in the world of API development.

Make sure to check out his new book Talking To Other People’s APIs.

You can check out the show in a few different ways: either through the in-page audio or video player or you can check out the video directly on YouTube. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter for updates on when new shows are released.

On the Symfony Finland site there's a new post sharing a tutorial showing how to add a GraphQL API to your application with the help of the overblog/graphql-bundle bundle.

I've been using GraphQL for some API thingamajigs, and it's been working fine. Now with Symfony 4 out, I figured a write-up on how to use GraphQL with Symfony Flex could be useful for someone.

We'll expand on a previous demo app that I built. That app already uses Doctrine ORM as storage, so let's bridge that to a GraphQL API.

He starts by linking to "a quick read" about GraphQL for those not familiar and listing out the basic structure of the application he'll build out. Next comes the installation of the bundle and a debug bundle to help make it easier to locate errors. He then updates the application configuration to add routes and define the schema for the objects in the system. Using the GUI that comes with the debug package, he shows how to access the API and how to create a "resolver" that will relay the information back to the client from the GraphQL API request.

On the Symfony Finland site, there's a post that looks at the current state of GraphQL PHP libraries in 2017 and how they are integrated with applications using the Symfony framework.

GraphQL has continued to gain momentum over the course of 2017. While it's certainly not a replacement for REST in all cases, it does provide consumers of Content APIs, etc. better ergonomics than general purpose RESTful interfaces. For PHP there are currently two popular libraries, both of which have Symfony integration Bundles.

The post starts by talking about implementing GraphQL functionality in your own application and mentions the two main libraries currently used: Webonyx GraphQL PHP and Youshido GraphQL. It goes on to talk about the integrations both of these provide as bundles and a bit about what each has to offer. The post then wraps up with a look forward to the Symfony Flex support they provide and a few links to other resources about GraphQL and its use in Symfony applications.

On the Symfony Finland site there's a new post providing some examples of how the Symfony framework is staying relevant with new technologies and trends that have emerged recently in the web development world.

Symfony2 just turned five years old some months ago. This is an eternity in the web world and you average technology stack has likely grown in complexity since then. In addition to the standard components in LAMP you'll likely be peddling with a number of complementary technologies.

[...] The stability and flexibility have enabled Symfony to take hold also in more conservative industries like travel, where the backend systems are critical. [...] Next let's take a few options that developers of contemporary web applications may choose to adopt in their Symfony full stack framework applications when needed.

The post covers three "in style" technologies and how the Symfony framework (and community) are keeping pace:

• React.js Server Side Rendering with ReactBundle
• GraphQL APIs with the GraphQLBundle
• An Graph Database storage layer using Neo4j over PHP OGM

Each point includes a bit of information about both the technology and the related bundle with plenty of links to other resources and tutorials.

The Symfony Finland site has a recent post giving an overview of GraphQL and Symfony, combing the GraphQL query language (RESTish handling) from Facebook with your application.

The origins of GraphQL stem from the needs that Facebook's mobile applications had (and continue to have). They needed a data-fetching API that was flexible enough to describe all the different kinds of data that the social network had available. [...] Back in September 2015 GraphQL was already powering Billions of API calls a day at Facebook. [...] The core idea of GraphQL is to send a simple string to the server. This string is then interpreted by the server and it sends back a JSON payload that responds to follows the structure of the query itself.

The post includes an example of what the request and response from a GraphQL query might look like for a social network's data. They also link to several PHP libraries that have come up around the functionality making it easier to integrate. There's also links to some Symfony bundles that provide functionality to make your own GraphQL servers.