A GraphQL Implementation for Erlang

Jesper L. Andersen
Erlang Programmer, FP Geek

A GraphQL Implementation for Erlang

GraphQL is a Query Language for the web. Taking outset in some of the same ideas as SQL, the goal is to bring the same power to the Web in a fast, extensible and safe way. It moves many design decisions to the client-side, which improves productivity, but also defines a strict (typed) contract between the client and the server.


This talk presents a GraphQL framework for Erlang. This framework is usable over any transport you wish, but has mostly been used on top of the Cowboy web server. In the talk, we will focus on the items which are specific to an Erlang implementation and how the system is constructed. We will also focus on where the implementation diverges from the de-facto Node.js implementation, in order to better facilitate the model of Erlang.

Talk objectives:

  • The talk has two goals: explain how a GraphQL backend might be useful to you. And explain how the backend works, so you have a better time at understanding its internals.

Target audience:

  • Web backend developers, language geeks, people who build web APIs for a living or for fun.
Slides

About Jesper

Jesper is an Erlang hacker at Erlang Solutions Ltd, working on all kinds of Erlang stuff. From optimization, to protocols, to internals. He also has some knowledge about Unix systems, functional programming, semantics, type systems and formal verification.
 
Before joining Erlang Solutions, he studied computer science at Copenhagen University. And he wrote a couple of BitTorrent clients, in Haskell and Erlang.Jesper is a Danish programming language geek, who has been working with Erlang for about 10 years. He is generally interested in formal methods, self healing systems, fault tolerance, programming languages, distributed systems, concurrency, and parallelism. He likes to apply new theoretic research by finding a practical real-world application for the problem. Former works include BitTorrent clients in Erlang and Haskell, various load regulators for systems. Currently he is mostly interested in the application of property-based-testing to real systems and GraphQL implementations.



GitHub: jlouis

Twitter: @jlouis666

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