Updates and GQL

Jan 04 2019

I had not posted in a while, so I thought I'd give a quick update of what I've been working on.

After completing number quest I started doing HackerRank problems. Initially all were in the Problem Solving category, specifically Algorithms and Data Structures. I was actually still using JavaScript at the time so I continued to use it to do these problems. I was actually quite happy with that because it allowed me to get more exposure to working with arrays and objects in JavaScript.

I then started with trying to figure out GraphQL using Django and graphene. GraphQL has similar functions to a REST API but you can ask for specific kind of data, which gives you more querying flexibility. Also you don't need to mess about with multiple urls/endpoints. All can be accessed from one endpoint that contacts the graphql server.

To be honest it took a little while and messing about to build the fairly basic functionality that I wanted. However, ...it worked. I made a simple model and was able to query, create, and update data through GraphiQL, via the Query and Mutation schemas that I set up. In short, I got it to work similar to a RESTful API. But I have to say some of it was a bit hacked.

I then started going through Test Driven Development. I'm working through a book by Harry Percival, it's a good book. I got stuck at one point, but that just allowed me to better explore and understand the database side of things (I eventually solved the issue). I'm going to keep working through the book and then try to redo what I did with GraphQL already but using TDD. Also, I may connect Postgresql to Django and get Vagrant set up at some point.