Releasing The GraphQL Guide
TL;DR
- GraphQL is the best way to fetch data 👌
- The GraphQL Guide is the best way to learn how 😃
- Use code LAUNCH for 20% off (good through April 30th) 🚀
It’s been a long time since our initial beta release, but after years of writing and re-writing, we’re finally ready to release our book!
By John Resig and Loren Sands-Ramshaw
The Guide is the complete reference text for GraphQL. At 886 pages, we cover a ton:
- An extensive Background chapter with topics ranging from HTTP to Testing to Authentication.
- A basic GraphQL introduction for those new to it.
- Three chapters on the GraphQL spec.
- Five chapters on client libraries, including a comprehensive 232-page React chapter and shorter chapters to give you a taste of Vue, React Native, iOS, and Android.
- A 340-page Server chapter, including a substantial coding tutorial and sections on testing, production, data sources, federation, Hasura, schema design, security, and much more.
We don’t expect people to sit down and read it cover to cover; instead, we imagine devs picking just the chapters that are relevant to them. A junior dev interested in full-stack React Native might start with the Background and read straight through, skipping Vue, iOS, and Android, whereas a senior backend dev who’s already familiar with GraphQL might just read the spec and server chapters, and then come back to them as a reference when needed.
The book comes in ebook formats and a website for easy reference, which you can preview here. Alongside each coding section is a git tag so that you can view or checkout the code at that point. An advantage of the digital book format is the ability to keep the content updated as libraries and our recommendations change. The React chapter, for instance, has already gone through two major updates during the beta — once from HOCs to render props, and then from render props to hooks — and it will be updated again once React Suspense is finalized (if that actually ever happens 😉😄). We’ve also delayed the iOS chapter, which we’ll be writing and sending to readers once v1 of the Apollo iOS library is released.
We see content updates as both taking substantial work and providing a lot of value, which is why we’ve incorporated them into our packages: there are no updates included in the Basic package, two years of updates for Pro, and lifetime updates for Full. Depending on which package you choose, we also have videos explaining the code, extra content, interviews, Slack, technical support, and a T-shirt 😄.
This project has taken much longer than we expected, and the length of the book has wound up being much longer than we expected. We’d like to give a huge shout-out to our 740 beta readers who stuck with us through four major versions of the in-progress text. We really appreciate you all, especially those who took the time to send in feedback so we could improve the book. Thanks to you, we’re confident this book is the best reference text for GraphQL out there.
We’ve also made a few other changes to packages since the beta launch:
- 5% of all revenue is now donated via Stripe Climate to atmospheric CO₂ removal 💃.
- An additional 5% of revenue from Full, Full team, and Training packages is donated via GitHub Sponsors to developers working on open-source software that we use or that’s in the GraphQL space. (Let us know of OSS GraphQL devs we’re missing! authors@graphql.guide)
- A new, more affordable team license that gets 20% off the Pro price.
We’ll be releasing blog posts with excerpts from the book and thoughts on the process of self-publishing, so follow us on Twitter (@graphqlguide) or Medium (“Follow” button below) if you’d like to hear more.
Use code LAUNCH at checkout to get 20% off your copy of the Guide (good through 4/30/21). For those of you employed as developers, don’t forget that every company should have an education budget for things like this, in which case you can get reimbursed!
To foster greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech, if you identify as part of a group that is underrepresented in the field (BIPOC, LGBTQIA, women, etc), please feel free to use code INCLUSION for half off.
Finally, we appreciate any support you’d like to give in helping spread the word of our launch, with favs/claps/RTs/comments/etc!
Happy learning 🤗
Loren & John
