Adding GraphQL To A Vanilla JS Web App

AWS Amplify for Firebasers

Following on from my first two Amplify articles in which I gave an overview and created a simple vanilla JS app with the Amplify service, in this article I would like to add GraphQL and compare the dev experience of Amplify with Firebase’s Firestore.

You will need to see the first two articles if you are a bit lost with the AWS Amplify BAAS setup.

AWS AppSync is AWS’s implementation of the GraphQL API. So AWS AppSync is a managed GraphQL service, and the database used for this implementation is Amazon DynamoDB which is a NoSQL database. The QL in GraphQL stands for “query language”.

If you are new to GraphQL, then I recommend watching these two YouTube videos to see how it works:

This article is not an explanation of GraphQL, but only how to add it to your Vanilla JS app with the Amplify CLI.

Carrying on from the last article’s code, run amplify add api in the terminal to add GraphQL to your project. You can see below there is an option to use REST, but obviously select GraphQL.

You’ll see that when you answer the question to edit the code, the schema file will be opened in an editing tab. This is just an example template for you to use.

Your GraphQL API has been created!

This is important to know, especially as someone comparing Amplify to Firebase. I’m particularly interested in the @searchable functionality…

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