Full-Stack Web Development with GraphQL and React: Taking React from frontend to full-stack with GraphQL and Apollo , Second Edition

You can leave the lines you wrote above as well:This book is very helpful for elevating the existing tech stack. It offers in-depth knowledge of GraphQL with React library. From the installation of softwares to solving complex problems the book has everything, it also consists of practical examples which is the most important thing. Still in the process of reading it.

This Sebastian is a good teacher, thanks for the second edition

This is an excellent little step-by-step tutorial. If you want to learn how to use GraphQL and React you could definitely do worse.It is aimed at people with no previous experience, so depending on your skill level you may find yourself skipping over the early sections that cover how to install Node and use NPM. It does go into some decent detail later on though. I learned.The code is pretty up to date. Functional components are used with hooks for state. As with all practical coding books, it'll be out of date in five years, but right now it's grand.As with all Packt books it's well presented and will look sweet on your shelves. A nice soft blue cover with orange accents. It's well made and doesn't fall apart.If this is a stack you need to pick up, reading this book will definitely set you on your way.

I was originally going to give this book a 3 or a 4, BUT I kept reading. The React chapter was rough and I don't think it would help a beginner. I'll be honest, parts of this book were rough. For an author that talks about "modern" apps so much, there is a lot that is not modern at all. I would not expect to see "var" instead of "let" or for loops instead of map/forEach loops.If you are intermediate at React and have seen GraphQL a bit, then just keep going. This book has some real gems.One thing I've previously found challenging is implementing GraphQL schemas. This book made that easier to understand for me. Then they used Sequelize. As a user of Sequelize, I had to wonder why they chose it over any number of more modern ORMs. However, I did like that the book uses GraphQL connecting to a SQL db. I see this in real environments but not in too many tutorials.Another item that can be difficult is pagination, but the author walked us through a solution to a pagination problem pretty well. I definitely learned a bit there. The Auth section is also pretty good. Another gem is setting up an AWS S3 bucket to handle image uploads. Definitely a good touch there!What I found the most interesting, and what really bumped up the score for me, was the biggest gem of the book: manual SSR! Instead of using NextJS! This was really interesting and I read that part very closely. I finally understood why the author didn't start with create-react-app, as that would have been impossible for the manual SSR that was built. If you have the basics of React down, definitely take a look at this book.

In reviewing this book I looked at both the physical and digital copies. Firstly I should say in the last few years the print quality of Packt has come on. The title gets it right with font-family choice, size, and of course, the code segments are clearly separated from the book text. I have no grumbles about the printed title. The binding seems to be on point and the book looks to be well enough made.Onto the content and we jump straight into setting up. The book bootstraps the project manually rather than using create-react-app CLI. I enjoyed this manual setup because it helps demystify it, highlights the pain in the rear that web pack can be and you’ll quite often see commercial projects which are not CRA-based apps. From this we go into a light dance around what react is and how to do some rendering basics. All standard stuff but so far so good.The next sections move on to the book project by way of introducing express.js and Apollo related packages to get graphQL up and running. Whereas many graphQL tutorials and books here will go with MongoDB/NoSQL here we use MySQL again this is in the book's favour as the commercial world at this point in time would say you’re still far likelier to bump into MySQL than MongoDB out there. The next chunk is working with the sequelize package covering creating, seeding, relationship types and migrations.The project itself is a chat/social app and while that is a common topic for portfolios and may lack originality it does cover a lot of the daily grind of tasks you will be expected to work on professionally, so it’s worth looking at the quality of the implementation rather than the originality of the app concept.The project itself uses AWS as we progress which requires sign-up and an active credit card, this will be off-putting to some which is understandable, but it makes the valid point that given the ubiquity of AWS in modern web development shops it’s a valid approach. It is worth noting that this may limit some people though.The SSR (server Side rendering) and Apollo with SSR is a stronger segment the book, the explanation is quite rich and this along with the following section on web sockets will take you into advanced features. The final run up is the obligatory deployment, here we’re using CircleCI and AWS. Deployment is the subject of entire books itself and therefore as a final segment its light, but it is informative enough and gives you what you need, or arms you with enough knowledge to go and hammer google with your questions.How could the book be better?1) It could have used typescript over javaScript as are and more commercial projects are going that way.2 )It could have been done as TDD (test-driven development), again, modern agile environments and strong CI/CD rely on a wealth of good quality testing and it’s one area where a lot of junior and mid developers are a bit short on. Testing is introduced but largely after the fact.Is the book worth your time?Yes, there is quality info to be had from the book. It makes an effort to give you whys over just a list of instructions without being overly fluffed-up to add book length where it was not required. Enjoyable read and the project was not an unpleasant build despite a few code errors in the book but they are easy enough to navigate around.