When developing software, it’s always tough to work with caching. While my team appreciates the efficiencies that Data Loader can provide for applications, we still struggle with the same problems that always come up when caching queries, mainly invalidating caches when a data set has changed. Read more on Managing Data Loaders in Node.js with Shared State…
Web Apps
Understanding the Apollo Default Resolver
According to documentation for Apollo’s GraphQL-tools:
You don’t need to specify resolvers for every type in your schema. If you don’t specify a resolver, GraphQL.js falls back to a default one…
The documentation goes on to state that the default resolver will look for a property on the parent object with the field name that’s being resolved. If that property is not a function, the value of the property is returned. But if the property does contain a function, then the default resolver calls it, and “passes the query arguments into that function.”
It wasn’t clear to me exactly what this meant, so I did some experimenting. Read more on Understanding the Apollo Default Resolver…
IdentityServer Authentication with an MVC Client & Unauthorized Loops
I’ve learned a lot about authentication this past month. My team has been working on migrating an application from using Forms Auth to IdentityServer single sign-on. Our goal is to provide a centralized authentication for all parts of the system. Read more on IdentityServer Authentication with an MVC Client & Unauthorized Loops…
Migrating an Ejected Create React App to TypeScript
I love Create React App, and I also love TypeScript. That means I really love react-scripts-ts, which is a great way to spin up a new SPA for experimental purposes.
Read more on Migrating an Ejected Create React App to TypeScript…
A JavaScript Object that Dynamically Returns Unknown Properties
In our current project, we make extensive use of JavaScript objects as dictionaries, with the property name functioning as a key for the object we want to look up. We can use the in operator to test for property presence, and the dictionaries are perfectly JSON-serializable.
However, when it comes time to build test fixtures around these dictionaries for testing code that might look up lots of different keys, creating the test data for all of these keys becomes a large effort. Read more on A JavaScript Object that Dynamically Returns Unknown Properties…
Creating Azure WebJobs in F#
My colleague Brian recently wrote about Azure Functions in F#. Azure Functions are great, and I definitely recommend them if they fit your use case.
These functions are built on top of an older background processing system called WebJobs. While Functions have largely eclipsed WebJobs, there remain certain [situations][webjobs-vs-functions] where the latter is still a better fit. Read more on Creating Azure WebJobs in F#…
Eliminate Circular Dependencies from Your JavaScript Project
Circular dependencies (also known as cyclic dependencies) occur when two or more modules reference each other.
This could be a direct reference (A -> B -> A):
// file a.ts
import { b } from 'b';
...
export a;Read more on Eliminate Circular Dependencies from Your JavaScript Project…
Setting Up Windows to Build and Run Node.js Applications
Node.js is just JavaScript, right? So it should be really easy to run Node.js applications on Windows—just download and install Node, npm install, and go, right?
Well, for some applications, that’s true. But if you need to compile extensions, you’ll need a few more things. And, of course, with Node.js itself being constantly under development, you’ll want to lock down your development to a version your code can use. In this post, I’ll talk you through how we get our Windows command-line environments set up for the Node.js (actually, Electron) application my team is developing.
Read more on Setting Up Windows to Build and Run Node.js Applications…
Combining Redux & Apollo Containers
Redux and Apollo are popular implementations of Flux architecture and GraphQL respectively. A common pattern is to make a GraphQL query with data from the Redux state. If the state value changes, Apollo should re-run the query and the new data should be reflected in the UI. Read more on Combining Redux & Apollo Containers…
Efficient Search Autocomplete with React-Redux & Apollo
The application I’m working on right now has a search box that makes suggestions as the user types and does quick, inline searches to provide extra-fast results. Yesterday, I talked about how we improve our timing with debouncing. Today I’ll dive into the technical details of how we built the autocomplete behavior using React–Redux and Apollo. Read more on Efficient Search Autocomplete with React-Redux & Apollo…