Make use of GraphQL Schema Language?

[kennetpostigo]

It would be really beneficial for people familiar with GraphQL who want to leverage the performance of OCaml if the OCaml GraphQL server could be created using the GraphQL Schema Language. The good folks working on Apollo have been able to get this working in Javascript. Not sure how you would go about doing this in OCaml but i'm sure it can be done. Take a look here for where they set this up.

[andreas]

That's an interesting idea, thanks for highlighting this!

[kennetpostigo]

@andreas No problem at all :)

[kennetpostigo]

Hey really interested in this and have a couple questions:

1. Is this a GraphQL implementation in OCaml? Or are you using another implementation?
2. What is the difference between this and ocaml-graphql
3. What is your goal with this project?
4. I want to make GraphQL possible with Reason. If this is an implementation of the graphql spec I'd like to fork it and convert it to reason which is a new frontend/syntax for OCaml, However I'd need some help in understanding the codebase.

Hopefully not too many questions 😄

[andreas]

1. The implementation is in pure OCaml, it does not rely on libgraphqlparser if that's what you're asking.
2. ocaml-graphql seems like a proof-of-concept of using libgraphqlparser from OCaml, but it looks like it currently doesn't do much more than that. In particular, you cannot define a schema in OCaml and run queries against that schema.
3. The goal is to create a library for making GraphQL servers in OCaml, i.e. define a schema and allow clients to query that schema with GraphQL over HTTP. Basically graphql-js, but in OCaml.
4. Feel free to port to Reason 😄 Let me know if you have any questions.

[kennetpostigo]

@andreas thank you so much for taking the time to answer! Any chance to change the name to graphql-ocaml? Since it is an implementation of graphql in OCaml. I can make a pr to the graphql website to get this reference implementation on the http://graphql.org website along with the other languages that graphql has been implemented in.

[kennetpostigo]

Also I'd love to help make the documentation site better. Let me know how I can help. No need to fork all OCaml code is valid in reason so we can use this library in reason.

[andreas]

I originally picked the name ocaml-graphql-server to not clash with ocaml-graphql, but graphql-ocaml could work as well.

The documentation site is generated with topkg doc, so it's derived from graphqli.mli. It would be great to improve the content in that file. Here's an example of a more heavily documented .mli file and the result. The README would probably also benefit from a make over. Note that the library itself is in flux while I implement core features, so the documentation will need to be adapted as the API changes.

[jimexist]

@kennetpostigo about porting to Reason, if you are using BuckleScript then it's just one bridge away to use all the packages from node.

[kennetpostigo]

@jimexist I realized we could just use refmt to get this to work. So no need to port

[jimexist]

@kennetpostigo you meant https://facebook.github.io/reason/nativeWorkflow.html#native-workflow-convert-ocaml-to-reason ?

[kennetpostigo]

yep

[andreas]

I'll close this one for now.