GraphQL Server

Now that you have a GraphQL schema, and you understand the concept of GraphQL schema and a GraphQL query, it’s time to create a real GraphQL server.

You are going to use the HTTP protocol to serve the GraphQL server, but note that there are other options for serving GraphQL - you can use WebSocket, SSE (Server-Sent Events) and basically any network transport protocol that you wish! (You can find a list of transport implementations at the end of this page)

Creating a GraphQL HTTP Server with Yoga

In this tutorial, we will be using GraphQL Yoga for building our Node.js GraphQL HTTP server.

You’ll need the graphql-yoga package available in your project (if you have not yet installed in the last step), so install it using the following command:

npm i --save-exact graphql-yoga@5.10.4

pnpm add --save-exact graphql-yoga@5.10.4

yarn add --exact graphql-yoga@5.10.4

bun add --exact graphql-yoga@5.10.4

Now, update src/main.ts to create a simple GraphQL HTTP server on port 4000:

import { createServer } from 'node:http'
import { createYoga } from 'graphql-yoga'
import { schema } from './schema'
 
function main() {
  const yoga = createYoga({ schema })
  const server = createServer(yoga)
  server.listen(4000, () => {
    console.info('Server is running on http://localhost:4000/graphql')
  })
}
 
main()

Now, try to run your server again with

npm run dev

pnpm run dev

yarn dev

bun run dev

open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:4000/graphql.

Type in the following operation in the left editor section and press the Play button for executing the operation against the GraphQL server.

query {
  hello
}

Unsurprisingly, the result looks like the following:

{ "data": { "hello": "Hello World!" } }

Of course, it is also possible to send requests to the service without GraphiQL, e.g. by using curl.

In another terminal window, run the following command in order to execute the same query operation.

curl -X POST http://localhost:4000/graphql -H "Content-type: application/json" --data-raw '{"query": "query { hello }"}'

Oh wonder, the result looks like the following:

{ "data": { "hello": "Hello World!" } }