Apollo is mentioned 4 times in the article. That's beside the point though, even using GraphQL with plain old HTTP requests would have removed a lot of the need for Redux in our case.
This is true. Our team is a little unique maybe in that we can all modify the GraphQL Schemas when we need to (we're using Node.js + Join Monster so it's all JavaScript). I would say though that with our REST API, updating was a lot more involved as we'd have to add more boilerplate on the client side to support the new data structures, whereas with GraphQL, it's just updating the query.
So this apple/oranges thing is true and addressed in the article.
Have you used GraphQL/Apollo? It can do a lot of the things you're wanting:
- You can combine multiple data sources into a central datastore using GraphQL (REST APIs + DB queries etc.., that's one of the major benefits of it.
- Apollo on the client can manage local state as well as server state in one standardized interface.
- GraphQL is great for MVPs and Hobby projects but is used for a larger projects as well (Shopify, Github, Coursera, Facebook, Pinterest, Product Hunt, I could go on...).
I'd suggest you give it a shot, it's super fun to work with and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
The local store in Apollo (at least the current version) is actually Redux (and a good use case for it IMO). In our experience it hasn't been to hard to manage and it's nice that you can still use the Redux DevTools to inspect the state.
Fair points. The thing that tipped in favor of GraphQL for the back-end was that it puts the client in charge of the data structure. I suppose you could hack something like that with REST but it would be difficult.
Our application is by no means narrow or simple and GraphQL (without Redux) has been perfect. I don't dislike Redux, we just didn't need it after switching to GraphQL.
That's true however at that point our API is not longer "RESTfull" and become very ad hoc. The cool thing we found with GraphQL is that the client can control the shape of the data it needs without any server side changes (assuming your schema exposes everything properly).