Sara HARKOUSSE

GraphQL or Falcor, that is the question?

10 minutes

Desktops, tablets, smart phones, wearable gadgets… Every day, there are more and more clients. They are actually shaping the architecture design we need to make when building systems. How do you write a backend or a service that can meet the varying demands of each client? How you can successfully serve all of these heterogeneous needs? You might build REST architecture. Nah! It will doesn’t take very long before you hit a lot of problems. For instance, there is a continuous tension between efficiently satisfying the data needs of specific clients, and keeping the number of endpoints manageable since that a server defines what data an endpoint returns, and the client merely requests it. So, what about telling the server what you need? Developers at Facebook and Netflix asked that led them to creating new technologies like GraphQL and Falcor. But, which is best for you app? At high level, they are both trying to do demand-driven design; they both try to tackle the same problems, but in different ways. So how we understand what the differences are? Should one replace the other?