Backend interfaces: WHY we embrace GraphQL.

GraphQL is a query language for APIs that allows us to retrieve and manipulate data. At Lifely we see GraphQL as a spiritual successor to the REST protocol, as it offers some distinct advantages over REST. For starters, web and mobile front-end teams have full control over the data that is retrieved from the API because they can speficy a data query that suits their needs exactly. Also GraphQL APIs are typesafe and thus automatically documented, which means anyone consuming your API knows exactly what is available, how the data is formatted, not to mention there being a reduction in type errors (nice clean data). Lastly, GraphQL can serve as an integration layer to combine multiple (legacy) APIs and it doesn’t mind if the data comes from a REST API, an old SOAP API, or even from the database directly.