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This is the specification for GraphQL, a query language and execution engine originally created at Facebook in 2012 for describing the capabilities and requirements of data models for client-server applications. The development of this open standard started in 2015. This specification was licensed under OWFa 1.0 in 2017. Copyright and trademark was transferred to the GraphQL Foundation in 2019. GraphQL has evolved and may continue to evolve in future editions of this specification. GraphQL is not a programming language capable of arbitrary computation, but is instead a language used to make requests to application services that have capabilities defined in this specification. GraphQL does not mandate a particular programming language or storage system for application services that implement it. Instead, application services take their capabilities and map them to a uniform language, type system, and philosophy that GraphQL encodes.
Features
- GraphQL is unapologetically driven by the requirements of views and the front-end engineers that write them
- The request is shaped just like the data in its response. It is a natural way for clients to describe data requirements
- Every GraphQL service defines an application-specific type system. Requests are executed within the context of that type system
- Through its type system, a GraphQL service publishes the capabilities that its clients are allowed to consume
- GraphQL is introspective. A GraphQL service’s type system can be queryable by the GraphQL language itself, as will be described in this specification
- GraphQL introspection serves as a powerful platform for building common tools and client software libraries
Project Samples
