What happens if we treat GraphQL Queries as the API definition?
You've probably read the title twice, and it still doesn't make sense. One very powerful feature of GraphQL is that we have a schema. Why would you want to give this up and how should we treat Queries like Schemas? Let me explain...
A while ago, I was working on a library called graphql-go-tools which implements the GraphQL specification in Go, so that one can build tools like GraphQL proxies, caches, WunderGraphs etc. on top of it. I was investigating how persisted Queries could help to make GraphQL APIs more secure and performant when I came across a video of a very smart person, Sean Grove.
Sean was presenting how he used an extended version of GraphiQL. First, he wrote a number of Queries in the browser. Then he clicked a button and generated a fully functional React Application. With the help of CodeSandbox, you were immediately able to run the app from within GraphiQL.
There were a few things I didn't agree with. My thoughts were that this shouldn't be embedded into the browser. It needs to work in a local dev environment. It should be easy to embed this into the development workflow.
