GraphQL versus REST

As we said early on, GraphQL is an open source data query and manipulation language that provides a set of rules and standards to create efficient and flexible Web APIs. The language was developed by Facebook in 2012 as an internal project, before being released to the public in 2015, immediately getting the attention of many developers due to its innovative approach.

Comparing GraphQL with REST is almost inevitable since the former has been developed with the precise goal of solving some of the most notable REST drawbacks: for that very reason, the best thing we can do to understand the pros and cons of these two approaches is to briefly summarize the distinctive features of each one of them, starting with the technology that came first.

REST

Representational State Transfer, better known as REST, is an architectural style specifically designed for network-based applications that use the standard HTTP get post put and delete request methods to access...