APIQL Express

Giving API consumers the power of REST resources for GraphQL APIs.

Work-in-progress - POC at this point, subject to lots of change

• No tests yet
• No permenant persistence yet
• Does not check for uniqueness of resource paths between API descriptions yet

apiql-express is a light expressjs module that can be used in a proxy or a gateway in front of any GraphQL service, or in a Node.js-based GraphQL service to enable consumers to create any number of ad hoc REST resources using GraphQL queries and mutations as the configuration language. Just add it to any expressjs application to extend its functionality.

$ npm install apiql-express

const apiql = require('apiql-express');
const express = require('express');

const app = express();
const port = 3000;

app.use(apiql());

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example proxy listening on port ${port}!`));

Quick Start

You can try out out a proxy example with the Star Wars example server as follows:

In one terminal:

$ git clone git@github.com:apollographql/starwars-server.git
$ cd starwars-server
$ npm install
$ npm start

And in another terminal:

$ git clone git@github.com:fosrias/apiql-express.git
$ cd apiql-express/examples/proxy
$ npm install
$ npm start

And in another terminal:

$ open http://localhost:3000/apiql/api-description
$ cd path/to/apiql-express/root
$ curl --header "Content-Type: application/openapi+yaml" \
    --request PUT \
    --data "$(cat examples/star-wars-api.yml)" \
    http://localhost:3000/apiql/apis/my-api
$ curl --header "Accept: application/openapi+yaml" http://localhost:3000/apiql/apis/my-api
$ curl --header "Accept: application/openapi+json" http://localhost:3000/apiql/apis/my-api
$ open http://localhost:3000/apiql/apis/my-api
$ curl localhost:3000/droids/2000
...
$ curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --request POST \
    --data '{ "review": {"stars": 5, "commentary": "This is a great movie!" }}' \
    http://localhost:3000/episodes/JEDI/reviews
...

Viola!

Creating ad hoc APIs

Basically, following API design-first principles, you define an OpenAPI 3.0 API Description document for your REST API. Currently, responses are un-transformed GraphQL responses, so if you want to add components, they need be the expected GraphQL responses. Then, add a corresponding GraphQL query or mutation, an x-graphqlQuery or x-graphqlMutation extension string, respectively, to each opertion in the description document. The operationId MUST match the GraphQL query method name and any operation parameter names must exactly match any GraphQL $ variables defined in your query or mutation strings. That's it.

paths:
  /droids/{id}:
    get:
      description: Returns a Droid
      operationId: droidById
      parameters:
      - name: id
        in: path
        description: ID of a droid to fetch
        required: true
        schema:
          type: integer
          format: int64
      x-graphqlQuery: |
        query droidById($id: ID!) {  
          droid(id: $id) {
            name  
          }
        }

Checkout the GraphQL docs for more ideas on creating custom resources from GraphQL queries.

Configuring GraphQL context

You can set the following envars to configure the target endpoint for the target GraphQL service as follows:

$ export APIQL_TARGET_PROTOCOL=https (default: http)
$ export APIQL_TARGET_HOST=example.com (default: localhost)
$ export APIQL_TARGET_PORT=9000 (default: 8080)
$ export APIQL_TARGET_PATH=/my-graphql (default: /graphql)

Alternately, you can set a context in your express application:

const apiql = require('apiql-express');
const express = require('express');

const app = express();
const port = 3000;

const context = {
  targetProtocol: 'https',
  targetHost: 'example.com',
  targetPort: 8443,
  targetPath: 'my-graphql'
}

app.use(apiql(context));

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example proxy listening on port ${port}!`));

In the case of extending an expressjs GraphQL service with apiql-express, configure the target endpoint to be the service's own GraphQL endpoint.

License

MIT

Thanks to Stephen Mizell for lots of good thoughts.