Next.js and GraphQL: Building Modern APIs for Your App

In this article, we'll explore how to use Next.js and GraphQL to build modern APIs for your app. GraphQL is a powerful query language that enables developers to query and mutate data from a backend server. On the other hand, Next.js is a JavaScript framework that makes it easy to build server-side rendered React applications. Combining these two popular technologies can help you create a powerful API to serve your app's needs.

Getting Started

Before you can begin building your API, you'll need to install the necessary dependencies. To install the latest version of Next.js, use the following command:

npm install next

You'll also need to install the GraphQL and apollo-server packages. To do this, use the following commands:

npm install graphql
npm install apollo-server

Once you've installed the necessary dependencies, you can start creating your API.

Creating Your API

Now that you've installed the necessary dependencies, you can start creating your API. To do this, you'll need to create a GraphQL schema file. This file will define the various types of data that your API will support. Here's an example of a simple GraphQL schema:

type User {
  id: ID!
  name: String
  email: String
}

type Query {
  users: [User]
}

type Mutation {
  addUser(name: String, email: String): User
}

This simple GraphQL schema defines a User type and two queries: users and addUser. The users query will return an array of User objects and the addUser mutation will add a new user to the database.

Once you've created your GraphQL schema, you can create your API endpoint using the Apollo Server library. Here's an example of how you can use Apollo Server to create an API endpoint:

const { ApolloServer } = require('apollo-server');
const typeDefs = require('./schema.graphql');
const resolvers = require('./resolvers')

const server = new ApolloServer({
  typeDefs,
  resolvers,
});

server.listen().then(({ url }) => {
  console.log(`🚀  Server ready at ${url}`);
});

This code creates an Apollo Server instance and passes it the GraphQL schema and resolvers. The listen method starts the server and returns the URL that you can use to access the API.

Using the API

Now that you've created your API, you can start using it in your Next.js application. To do this, you'll need to install the apollo-client package. This package will enable you to make GraphQL queries and mutations from your Next.js app.

Once you've installed the apollo-client package, you can start making requests to your API. Here's an example of how you can make a query to the users endpoint:

query {
  users {
    id
    name
    email
  }
}

This query will return an array of User objects. You can then use this data in your application to render a list of users.

Conclusion

In this article, we explored how to use Next.js and GraphQL to build modern APIs for your app. We started by installing the necessary dependencies and creating a GraphQL schema. We then created an API endpoint using Apollo Server. Finally, we used the apollo-client package to make requests to the API from our Next.js app.

By combining Next.js and GraphQL, you can quickly and easily create powerful APIs for your applications. This approach is ideal for applications that need to query and mutate data from a backend server.

For more information about Next.js and GraphQL, see the official documentation:

• Next.js (opens in a new tab)
• GraphQL (opens in a new tab)