Building a GraphQL server with GraphQL Helix 🧬

Earlier this week I released GraphQL Helix, a new JavaScript library that lets you take charge of your GraphQL server implementation.

There's a couple of factors that pushed me to roll my own GraphQL server library:

I wanted to use bleeding-edge GraphQL features like@defer, @stream and @live directives.

I wanted to make sure I wasn't tied down to a specific framework or runtime environment.

I wanted control over how server features like persisted queries were implemented.

I wanted to use something other than WebSocket (i.e. SSE) for subscriptions.

Unfortunately, popular solutions like Apollo Server, express-graphql and Mercurius fell short in one or more of these regards, so here we are.

Existing libraries like Apollo Server provide you with either a complete HTTP server or else a middleware function that you can plug into your framework of choice. GraphQL Helix takes a different approach -- it just provides a handful of functions that you can use to turn an HTTP request into a GraphQL execution result. In other words, GraphQL Helix leaves it up to you to decide how to send back the response. Continue reading on DEV...