Skip to main content

Using GraphQL in Azure API Management

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m a big fan of GraphQL. Even Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon and last year they announced support for GraphQL in Azure API Management.

Until recently I didn't had an opportunity to give it a try, but with the start of a new project, I could finally combine GraphQL and Azure API Management.

Import a GraphQL API

Let’s walk through the steps to import an existing GraphQL API backend and expose it through Azure API Management.

  • Go to your Azure API Management instance in the Azure portal.
  • From the side menu, select APIs in the APIs section:

  • Choose GraphQL under Define a new API:

  • In the dialog box specify the following fields:
    • Display name: The name you want to use to recognize your API
    • Name: Autogenerated based on the display name
    • GraphQL API endpoint: The endpoint URL where the GraphQL schema is available for download

  • Click on Create to import the GraphQL api.
  • After the API is imported you can browse the schema on the Design tab:

  • To test our API endpoint, go to the Test tab. Select the fields you want to fetch or write your GraphQL query from scratch:

  • Click on Send to execute the query and view the returned response:

Next week, we’ll have a look at the other features that Azure API Management has to offer for GraphQL.

More information: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/graphql-api

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Podman– Command execution failed with exit code 125

After updating WSL on one of the developer machines, Podman failed to work. When we took a look through Podman Desktop, we noticed that Podman had stopped running and returned the following error message: Error: Command execution failed with exit code 125 Here are the steps we tried to fix the issue: We started by running podman info to get some extra details on what could be wrong: >podman info OS: windows/amd64 provider: wsl version: 5.3.1 Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2655: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. That makes sense as the podman VM was not running. Let’s check the VM: >podman machine list NAME         ...
Read more

Cache stampede: when our cache turned against us

While investigating some performance issues, we ran into an ASP.NET Core API that cached a fairly expensive aggregation query for 60 seconds. Under normal load, that was fine: one request rebuilds the cache, everyone else reads from it. Under peak load, dozens of requests would arrive in that same expiry window, all see a cache miss, and all fire the same expensive query in parallel. The database didn't like that. That was the moment when our caching layer stopped helping and started hurting. A burst of requests comes in at the same time, all miss the cache, and all go hammer the database or the downstream API at once. That's a cache stampede . The cache was supposed to protect our backend, and for a few hundred milliseconds it did the opposite. Why this happens IMemoryCache.GetOrCreate (and its async sibling) looks like it protects you, but it doesn't add any locking on its own. Look at the naive version: public async Task<Report> GetReportAsync(string key) ...
Read more

VS Code Planning mode

After the introduction of Plan mode in Visual Studio , it now also found its way into VS Code. Planning mode, or as I like to call it 'Hannibal mode', extends GitHub Copilot's Agent Mode capabilities to handle larger, multi-step coding tasks with a structured approach. Instead of jumping straight into code generation, Planning mode creates a detailed execution plan. If you want more details, have a look at my previous post . Putting plan mode into action VS Code takes a different approach compared to Visual Studio when using plan mode. Instead of a configuration setting that you can activate but have limited control over, planning is available as a separate chat mode/agent: I like this approach better than how Visual Studio does it as you have explicit control when plan mode is activated. Instead of immediately diving into execution, the plan agent creates a plan and asks some follow up questions: You can further edit the plan by clicking on ‘Open in Editor’: ...
Read more