REST vs GraphQL

What is REST?

• REST: Representational State Transfer
• Server responds with the representation of a resource
• there is no “official” standard for RESTful web APIs
• REST is an architectural style, while SOAP is a protocol
• REST is not a standard in itself, but RESTful implementations make use of standards, such as HTTP, URI, JSON, and XML

References Codecademy

REST vs GraphQL

• RESTful services allow application to change state (modify data) without being state aware. For example, a RESTful user management service will always return the entire user record tree not just a few attributes specific to the requested state change.
• RESTful services always have specific endpoint to fetch specific data, to change specific state

REST cons

• over-fetching: fetching whole object graph instead of just few attributes
• under-fetching: multiple round trips to DB, multiple endpoints for different data types
• data binding via endpoints causes multiple iterations to build final “representation”

GraphQL pros

• GraphQL introduces a schema definition layer
• schema definition is built using JSON and it is state-aware
• you can chose specific data elements (instead of whole record) and you can have multiple domains of data with just one endpoint