Model Online / On-Site
Duration
Modules 5 modules

Course Objective & Scope

When web and mobile clients need richly related data on a single screen, REST endpoints often lead to over-fetching or multiple round-trips. GraphQL solves this client flexibility problem, while introducing engineering challenges around N+1 queries, caching and abusive deep queries.

This course covers strongly typed schema modelling, resolver architecture, mutation and error design, batching with DataLoader, real-time subscriptions, query depth/cost limits, and composing microservices into a single supergraph with Apollo Federation. Participants build a GraphQL service in their organisation's stack (Node.js/Apollo, .NET/HotChocolate or Java/Spring for GraphQL) and draft a schema design guide.

Who Should Attend?

  • Backend developers building APIs or Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layers for web and mobile clients
  • Full-stack developers co-designing client-server data contracts
  • Architects unifying multiple downstream services behind a federated API layer
  • Prerequisite: HTTP and REST API development experience in any backend language

Key Takeaways

  • Design an evolvable, backward-compatible GraphQL schema using types, interfaces, unions and inputs
  • Eliminate N+1 database and service calls across nested fields with DataLoader
  • Harden the API with field-level authorisation, persisted queries and query depth/complexity limits
  • Implement Relay cursor pagination and structured mutation error payloads
  • Compose multiple subgraphs into a unified supergraph using Apollo Federation

Curriculum

GraphQL Fundamentals and Schema Design
  • GraphQL vs REST/gRPC: when to choose GraphQL or a BFF layer
  • SDL, Object/Scalar/Enum types, Interfaces, Unions and Input objects
  • Schema-first vs Code-first approaches, naming conventions and nullability rules
Queries, Mutations, Subscriptions and Error Modelling
  • The resolver execution tree, context objects and connecting data sources
  • Mutation design, payload patterns and modelling domain errors in the schema
  • Cursor-based pagination with the Relay Connection spec and Subscriptions
Performance: The N+1 Problem, DataLoader and Caching
  • Analysing the N+1 query problem in nested resolvers
  • Batching and per-request caching with DataLoader
  • Automatic Persisted Queries (APQ) and response/field caching strategies
Security, Authorisation and Production Hardening
  • Authentication and field-level authorisation with directives/middleware
  • Query depth limiting, query complexity/cost analysis and rate limiting
  • Managing introspection, field-level metrics and tracing in production
Schema Governance and GraphQL Federation
  • Schema evolution without breaking changes (@deprecated) and schema linting
  • Distributed subgraph architecture with Apollo Federation v2 (@key, @external, Router)

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