GraphQL Relay Server

This project contains an API for a fake book store called Athenaeum.

It showcases a GraphQL API compliant with the Relay GraphQL server spec.

Table of Contents

• Project Stack
• Project Features
• Project Setup
• GraphQL API
• Endpoints

Project Stack

• GraphQL API
• Express API
• PostgreSQL
• Docker

Features

• Relay GraphQL API featuring:
  • Global Object Identification
    • Node interface
    • Node root field
  • Cursor Connections
  • Dataloaders
• Authentication via salted hashed password
• Authorization via signed JWT
• Database data mocking with Faker

Setup

Setting up this project involves the following:

• Install Docker
• Pull PostgreSQL Docker Image
• Setup Database
• Start Express server
• Register User
• Login User

Install Docker

The data for the GraphQL API in this project is resolved from a PostgreSQL database running as a Docker container.

If you don't already have Docker installed, you can download Docker using the link below:

https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

Pull PostgreSQL Docker Image

With Docker installed, let's pull down the PostgreSQL Docker image with this command:

docker pull postgres

Now we can use this image to spin up a PostgreSQL Docker container.

Setup Database

Before we spin up a new postgres Docker container, let's first clone this project and then install its dependencies with:

npm install

With the project cloned and it's dependencies installed we'll next create a new .env file in the project root with the following contents:

POSTGRES_USER=root
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=example_password
POSTGRES_DB=athenaeum
HMAC_SECRET_KEY=abcd1234

The project includes a .env-example file which can be used as a reference.

The environment variables contained in the .env file will be used to provision a new postgres Docker container among other uses.

Now we can proceed with setting up the database - let's run the following command to do this:

npm run db:setup

This command does three things:

1. Spins up a postgres database inside a Docker container
2. Inserts tables into the postgres database
3. Populates database tables with some mock data

After running the above command, we should have a running database with the following tables:

• users
• books
• authors
• genres
• book_authors
• book_genres
• book_format
• genre_type

We can verify this in a number of ways - personally I prefer to jump into a PostgreSQL GUI such as https://www.pgadmin.org/ to inspect the database.

Start Express Server

Now that the postgres database is setup, we can spin up the Express server provided by this project.

This can be done via the following command:

npm run start

This will spin up an Express server exposing three REST endpoints:

• /register - endpoint to register new user account
• /login - endpoint to login as particular user
• /graphql - endpoint to send GraphQL queries to

Register User

To use the /graphql endpoint we first need to register as a new user and then login as that user.

See the register endpoint documentation for more details.

Once a new user account has been registered, we can proceed to login as that user.

Login User

The /login endpoint is used to login with a set of user credentials and responds with a JSON Web Token, or JWT for short.

See the login endpoint documentation for more details.

Once a JWT has been obtained via the /login endpoint, we can proceed to query the GraphQL API endpoint /graphql.

GraphQL API

This project ships with GraphiQL allowing you to write and execute queries via a web interface.

If the Express server is up, we can head over to http://localhost:4000/graphql to start querying the GraphQL API.

To use the GraphiQL interface, we'll need to create a new cookie in the browser called Authorization with the value of the JWT we acquired by logging in.

Endpoints

register

The /register endpoint is used to register a new user account.

Method: POST

Expected HTTP headers:

Content-Type	'application/json'

Expected arguments:

Field	Type	Required
email	string	true
firstName	string	true
lastName	string	true
password	string	true
confirmPassword	string	true

login

The /login endpoint is used to login with a set of user credentials and responds with a JSON Web Token, abbreviated to JWT.

Method: POST

Expected HTTP headers:

Content-Type	'application/json'

Expected Arguments:

Field	Type	Required
email	string	true
password	string	true

graphql

The /graphql endpoint accepts GraphQL requests.

Method: POST

HTTP Headers:

Content-Type	'application/json'
Authorization	'Bearer xxx.xxx.xxx'