Because Developers are Awesome - page 9

Where do you start with GraphQL? I asked four engineers

February 06, 2019 6 minute read

There has been a lot of discussion on GraphQL. In time, it may rank up there alongside REST as a defining protocol for client-server computing. It is at least trending that way right now. REST has got longevity going for it — years of top engineers thinking about the best ways to structure a REST-based API and thoughts on how to handle it. GraphQL hasn’t got the longevity. It does, however, have senior professional developers who constantly think about APIs and development in order to answer ...

What AWS service should you use to publish a web site?

January 31, 2019 4 minute read

There are at least five different services you can use to publish a web site on AWS: Amazon S3 + Amazon Cloudfront AWS Amplify Console Amazon Lightsail AWS Elastic Beanstalk Do-it-yourself compute / storage / network stack Which one of these do you choose? Well, “it depends” is a great answer to this question, but I hope that this article will demystify the strengths of each choice and give you a roadmap to make a choice. This article is not designed for the person who knows a ...

The three ways to execute a GraphQL query from React with AWS AppSync (and how to choose)

January 15, 2019 5 minute read

AWS AppSync is a managed GraphQL service that can (and probably should) act as the data layer for your app. I want to take a look at how you can send a query to AWS AppSync from your React (or React Native) app. You have three basic choices: Include a query within a component using AWS Amplify. Wrap your query in the Connect component using AWS Amplify. Use the Apollo Client with the AWS AppSync SDK. Which do you choose depends on what your needs are. There is no “one size fits all”...

Early return from GraphQL Resolvers with AWS AppSync

January 03, 2019 3 minute read

I am currently developing a “reviews” app, written in React Native and using a suite of services surrounding AWS AppSync for the data backend. Yesterday, I ran into a problem. This is how I solved that problem. First, let’s take a look at the problem. I have a query that is submitted like this: { me { id name locations { totalCount } reviews { totalCount } favorites { totalCount } } } The query is used to generate a header on a “My Information” page. Eventually, I’l...

Handling File Uploads with AWS AppSync

December 18, 2018 9 minute read

GraphQL does not handle files. It may seem an obvious statement, but it needs to be said. GraphQL does not handle files. It handles structured data. Which isn’t to say that GraphQL does not have a role to play within file handling — just that the upload and download of files needs to be done outside the confines of GraphQL. In this article, I’m going to present one way that you can handle the upload and download of files whereby the URL of the files are presented via GraphQL using AWS AppSy...

Bootstrapping a React Native App: A Comparison

December 10, 2018 7 minute read

It’s been a while since I have worked on a React Native app. In that time, create-react-native-app (CRNA) has been deprecated, and expo-cli has taken its place as the advised route. There is still react-native init, and Infinite Red has ignite. That is four different ways of bootstrapping a React Native app. Before I continue, let me be clear on what I want: I want to use “best practices” in my app architecture - for state, communication with my AWS-based backend, navigation, and so on. ...

Authentication with AWS Amplify and Android: Fraud Protection and Analytics

November 05, 2018 4 minute read

This will be an in-depth series on authentication with AWS Amplify. Here are the topics I am going to cover, and I will update each blog with the links as I complete the articles. The basics - a username/password system. Customizing the UI. Authenticating with Facebook. Authenticating with Google. Using third-party authentication providers. Using Time-based One-time passwords (TOTP). Using Biometric authentication. Doing fraud protection and analytics. Over the last seven ...

Authentication with AWS Amplify and Android: Integrating Biometrics

October 29, 2018 8 minute read

This will be an in-depth series on authentication with [AWS Amplify]. Here are the topics I am going to cover, and I will update each blog with the links as I complete the articles. The basics - a username/password system. Customizing the UI. Authenticating with Facebook. Authenticating with Google. Using third-party authentication providers. Using Time-based One-time passwords (TOTP). Using Biometric authentication. Doing fraud protection and analytics. This is the sevent...

Backend GraphQL: How to trigger an AWS AppSync mutation from AWS Lambda

October 26, 2018 14 minute read

This blog will explore a technique that opens up a whole new world of possibilities for notifying clients of results within a serverless application. Let’s say you have built a nice mobile and web versions of a chat application that uses a GraphQL API built on top of AWS AppSync. Users authenticate with Amazon Cognito user pools Users table is stored in DynamoDB Changes to the users table are communicated to the app via subscriptions How does the users table get updated? A naive a...

Authentication with AWS Amplify and Android: Integrating TOTP

October 22, 2018 9 minute read

This will be an in-depth series on authentication with [AWS Amplify]. Here are the topics I am going to cover, and I will update each blog with the links as I complete the articles. The basics - a username/password system. Customizing the UI. Authenticating with Facebook. Authenticating with Google. Using third-party authentication providers. Using Time-based One-time passwords (TOTP). Using Biometric authentication. Doing fraud protection and analytics. Over the last five...

Adrian Hall