Seeking Insights on Implementing GraphQL

[arkid15r]

As part of addressing Algolia index limitations in our current implementation, we’re exploring the use of GraphQL to enhance data fetching and API efficiency in our Django backend and React frontend application. Before moving forward, we’d like to gather experience-based insights from the team to ensure a thoughtful approach:

1. Benefits and Challenges

   • What real-world benefits have you experienced with GraphQL?
   • What challenges did you face, particularly with learning curve, tooling, or debugging?

2. Integration with Django

   • How well did libraries like Graphene or Strawberry work for you?
   • Any challenges with implementing authentication, permissions, or custom resolvers?

3. Integration with React

   • How has using tools like Apollo Client or Relay impacted your React applications?
   • Did GraphQL simplify or complicate state management in your projects?

4. Performance and Scalability

   • How did GraphQL affect application performance, especially for large-scale projects?
   • Were there any specific issues related to query complexity or data over-fetching/under-fetching?

Since this decision could significantly impact both our backend and frontend workflows, we want to ensure we’ve considered all practical factors and learned from real-world use cases.

Please share your insights, experiences, and recommendations by [specific deadline]. If there are other tools or approaches we should evaluate, let us know as well!

[harsh3dev]

I have only worked with GraphQL with React so it is a good addition to our current stack and I think it will be beneficial in multiple places like the Mentorship portal as well as the existing use cases.
Curious to hear what others think.

[arkid15r]

So the problem is in the indexed entity size limitation. What we want to do is keeping searchable/rankable data in the index and extract everything else to our backend (probably, using GraphQL)

[Rajgupta36]

I also used GraphQL with React. It optimized our queries and simplified state management in React, allowing us to retrieve only the data we need. However, the implementation was a bit challenging. I haven't worked on scaling any applications based on graphql, so I don't have experience in that area.

[abhayymishraa]

I have recently worked with GraphQL in a React project using Apollo Client and GraphQL.

From my prospective, what i learned that is important :

• its feature to request ony the required data reduce extra fetching
• better type checking
• its built in caching mechanism
• use query and use mutation hooks provided by graphql data fetching declarative

It's implementation is challenging but yes we can start with a small, portion of our applicatio to test graphql