graphql-helix VS prisma1

Depends on language, I've build GraphQL servers in a few, though mostly JavaScript and Python. For Python I used to use Graphene, these days I use Strawberry.

For JavaScript, I originally used graphql-js and express-graphql, as these were the original libraries and I was a literal day 1 adopter. All the libraries are essentially just wrappers around graphql-js, so it's still viable to use directly. But for schema-building I now use Pothos (https://pothos-graphql.dev/), I'd probably use graphql-helix as the http layer (https://github.com/contra/graphql-helix).

If you want a lower level graphql server https://graphql-helix.vercel.app/ or https://benzene.vercel.app/ might be worth checking out.

While there are many GraphQL server packages available, we need one that will play nicely with Nuxt3's server engine (Nitro / h3). In the spirit of keeping things extensible and framework-agnostic, GraphQL Helix seems like a really good choice. Let's add it to our project:

Looks interesting, have you tried graphql-helix?

When using a JavaScript server, a convenient way to achieve this is with GraphQL Helix, which decouples the handling of the HTTP request from the GraphQL server. With Helix, we can have the routing logic be handled by a Node.js web framework (such as Express.js or Fastify), and then — depending on the requested path (i.e., the requested endpoint — we can provide the corresponding schema to the GraphQL server.

GraphQL Helix is a framework and runtime agnostic collection of utility functions for building your own GraphQL HTTP server. Instead of providing a complete HTTP server or middleware plugin function, GraphQL Helix only provides a handful of functions for turning an HTTP request into a GraphQL execution result. You decide how to send back the response.

import { envelop, useSchema, useLogger } from '@envelop/core'; import fastify from 'fastify'; import { processRequest, getGraphQLParameters } from 'graphql-helix'; // This creates the `getEnveloped` function for us. Behind the scense the wrapped functions are created once, here. const getEnveloped = envelop({ plugins: [useSchema(schema), useLogger()], }); const app = fastify(); app.route({ method: ['POST'], url: '/graphql', async handler(req, res) { // Here we can pass the request and make available as part of the "context". // The return value is the a GraphQL-proxy that exposes all the functions. const { parse, validate, contextFactory, execute, schema } = getEnveloped({ req, }); const request = { body: req.body, headers: req.headers, method: req.method, query: req.query, }; const { operationName, query, variables } = getGraphQLParameters(request); // Here, we pass our custom functions to Helix, and it will take care of the rest. const result = await processRequest({ operationName, query, variables, request, schema, parse, validate, execute, contextFactory, }); if (result.type === 'RESPONSE') { res.status(result.status); res.send(result.payload); } else { // You can find a complete example with Subscriptions and stream/defer here: // https://github.com/contrawork/graphql-helix/blob/master/examples/fastify/server.ts res.send({ errors: [{ message: 'Not Supported in this demo' }] }); } }, }); app.listen(3000, () => { console.log(`GraphQL server is running...`); });

Fortunately, we now have libraries like Graphql Helix, which, in my humble opinion, should replace express-graphql as the reference HTTP implementation since GraphQL Helix is also not tied to any web server framework.

If you are using Node.js there are a lot of implementations of GraphQL servers with a few being express-graphql, apollo-server, mercurius, graphql-helix and more. And if you are using other languages, you can see a great list here

Graphql Helix

I was surprised to see Prisma (a js library) listed, digging more I found out that they indeed had an Scala project which is now archived https://github.com/prisma/prisma1

For more: https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/3830

Hey there, I'm Nikolas from the Prisma team. Just came here to quickly clarify this notion:

> Prisma is an API server that puts a GraphQL API in front of a DB.

Prisma is an ORM which generates a JavaScript/TypeScript client library for your database.

Your description is very true for Prisma 1 (which has been in maintenance mode for several years and is officially deprecated by now [1]), but the latest version(s) of Prisma (v2+) don't expose a GraphQL API any more. Prisma 1 also used GraphQL SDL for data modeling, the Prisma ORM on the other hand has its own, custom modeling language for describing database schemas in a declarative way and also comes with a flexible migration system.

That being said (and as Jens also mentioned elsewhere), the Prisma ORM does use GraphQL _internally_ as a wire protocol. However, as a developer, you _never_ touch this internal GraphQL layer and are not even supposed to be aware of it (you actually have to jump through a lot of hoops to even "find" it). It's also very likely that we'll replace GraphQL as a wire protocol in the future, so "GraphQL" really isn't something you should be thinking about as a developer who is using Prisma.

Hope that clarifies the situation a bit, let me know if you have any further questions around this topic.

[1] https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/5208

Could you clarify this? Are you referring to the old Prisma 1 Cloud or the new Prisma Data Platform?

First released in 2019, Prisma is the newest ORM of the four we discussed. It will need time to get to a more mature state. Recently, the release of version 3 introduced a few breaking changes. There are also some existing issues noted in GitHub, such as that it does not support some Postgres column types.

Mongoose is quite a standard also open-source, but Prisma is an emerging modern solution that seems to take the cake.

Well, here comes Blitz, the agnostic monolith. Take the database, for example - Blitz comes out-of-the-box with Prisma 2. However, you're free to switch to another one like Fauna or DynamoDB. The same goes for the configuration; deciding a folder structure, defining routing conventions, selecting a styling library, and adding authorization and authentication are all set up by default, but that doesn't mean you cannot go your own way.

There is also a RealWorld port (Rakkas implementation of the RealWorld specification), a simple but complete fullstack application demonstrating how to approach building a REST API, accessing your database (via Prisma), handling authentication, testing, and more.

If you're into Typescript and prefer a code-first approach when working with databases, you'll be happy to learn about Prisma! Prisma is a next-generation Node.js and TypeScript ORM, that allows you to define a schema using a dedicated DSL so that you can then have all the comforts of modern development environments like intellisense, static type checking, automatic scaffolding and more.

It is a frontend framework, but with API routes and ORMs like https://www.prisma.io/ , you could use it as a complete stack in traditional sense I suppose.