Best practices for Fabric API for GraphQL
The Microsoft Fabric API for GraphQL is a handy service that quickly allows you to set up a GraphQL API to pull data from places like Data Warehouses, Lakehouse, and Mirrored Databases. It comes with an in-browser tool for writing and testing your queries and mutations that can work with tables, views and stored procedures. If you haven’t tried this out yet, start with a free Microsoft Fabric Trial.
In this blog post, we will cover some of best practices when building applications using Fabric API for GraphQL.
Efficient Query Design
Optimize your queries to fetch only the data you need. Over-fetching can lead to performance issues, some of the most common problems are.
- Over-fetching: This is when you ask for more data than you actually need. It’s like bringing a whole toolbox when you only need a screwdriver.
- Under-fetching: This happens when you make too many small requests for data. It’s like running back and forth to the garage because you keep forgetting tools for your project.
Performance optimization for API for GraphQL
Some ways to optimize performance are:
- Batching: To avoid overloading Fabric API for GraphQL, you should group your queries. Avoid having to ask for all the information in one API call and identify how you can capture data in batches especially when working with a lot of data.
- Avoid complex queries: Make sure the queries are not complicated especially if they are deeply nested queries. More deeply the nest query it can be hard to identify what the issue is when debugging as well and can add overhead to fetch the data or perform a mutation.
Error Handling
Modern apps should be ready for things to go wrong and have a plan to fix them. Hence establishing a robust error handling strategy will help make the application more resilient. Error handling includes defining clear error messages and handling different types of errors gracefully. Make sure to have clear and concise error messages, that can help developers and operations teams figure out the issue and help mitigate it.
Change management
As your applications need to grow, you may need to modify your schema. While designing the schema, keep in mind with future modifications and understand how that can impact your query performance.
Security for API for GraphQL
Implement security measures like authentication and authorization to protect your data. Currently API for GraphQL requires applications to use Microsoft Entra for authentication and service principal. Your application needs to be registered and configured adequately to perform API calls against Fabric.
- Create a Microsoft Entra app in Azure to use Entra ID authentication.
- Use Service principal for API for GraphQL
Testing API for GraphQL
Testing is crucial for any moder app development. Having a testing strategy or plan to periodically test your GraphQL queries and mutations to ensure they work as expected and handle any edge cases effectively.
Conclusion
To keep your GraphQL APIs running smoothly and efficiently, make sure to fetch only the data you need, handle errors gracefully, and use batching and caching to lighten the load. Keep an eye on your queries to spot any slowdowns and design your schema with future changes in mind. You can find more best practices from GraphQL community to build more efficient and resilient applications that use API for GraphQL.
Want to get started faster, checkout Microsoft Fabric Samples GitHub repository to get started.
