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Fortifying Exograph with Clerk

· 6 min read
Ramnivas Laddad
Co-founder @ Exograph

In a previous blog, our code used Google Identity for authentication. While such a solution is possible, taking care of details, such as supporting multiple social providers or password-less authentication, verifying emails, and refreshing/revoking tokens, can get tedious. This is where external authentication providers such as Clerk make life easier.

Exograph now supports Clerk as an authentication provider! Our integration goes beyond supporting JWKS authentication; it also makes it easy and fun to explore APIs by integrating Clerk's UI in Exograph's playground.

This blog will transform a todo app without authentication into a multi-user todo app by adding just four lines and modifying a single line of code! The accompanying source code includes a web frontend written in Next.js, Tailwind, Apollo GraphQL Client, and TypeScript.

A taste of Clerk integration

Let's start with the same first step as the previous blog, with the code generated by the exo new command for a single-user todo project:

@postgres
module TodoDatabase {
@access(true)
type Todo {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
title: String
completed: Boolean
}
}

If you start the server using exo yolo, you can explore the API in the playground to query, create, update, and delete todos.

To make this a multi-user app, we associate each Todo with a user and ensure that a user can only access their todos through the following changes:

context AuthContext {
@jwt("sub") id: String
}

@postgres
module TodoDatabase {
@access(self.userId == AuthContext.id)
type Todo {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
title: String
completed: Boolean
userId: String = AuthContext.id
}
}

That's all we need to change! Compare this to other approaches where you would have to change most SQL statements or update invocation methods of an underlying framework besides including boilerplate code to deal with JWT verification.

Let's see what we did:

  • A new AuthContext sources the user id from the JWT token's sub claim (which will be the same as Clerk's user id). The client will send the JWT token in the Authorization header, and Exograph will verify it using the API URL provided by Clerk.
  • The Todo type adds a userId field. This field defaults to AuthContext's id value to let the client skip the user id when creating a todo.
  • The access control rule enforces that users may query and mutate Todos only if their userId matches AuthContext's id.
A difference from the previous blog

In the previous blog, we also had the User type, but since Clerk deals with user management, we don't need that anymore.

Now that the backend is ready, let's explore the API.

Using the playground

In a typical setup, the client will authenticate and send the Authorization token with each request. But how can you explore the API in the playground? How can you get a JWT token to put in the Authorization header? Developers often copy and paste the JWT token from the frontend app into the playground, which is a tedious process, to say the least (and requires building at least some frontend). It becomes even more challenging with providers such as Clerk, where the token expires quickly (by default, in 60 seconds).

A common problem

This is neither specific to GraphQL nor Clerk. The same issue arises with REST APIs, gRPC, etc., and any authentication mechanism, including roll-your-own.

Exograph integrates its playground with Clerk authentication (as well as roll-your-own, but that is not the focus of this blog). The playground includes the signing-in mechanism and automatically sends the Authorization header with the JWT for the signed-in user for each GraphQL request. In other words, the playground acts as an alternative frontend. You can now easily explore the API by, for example, signing in as different users and seeing how the access control rules work.

Let's try it out:

  • Set up a Clerk project by following the instructions and note down the value for "Publishable key" and "JWT public key/JWKS URL" from the Clerk dashboard under the "API Keys" section.
  • Start the Exograph server by specifying the OIDC URL as an environment variable. We will use the yolo command to start the server (you can also use the dev or production mode. See Exograph's documentation for more details).
EXO_OIDC_URL=https://<your-clerk-host>.clerk.accounts.dev exo yolo
  • In the playground, click on the key icon in the middle of the screen. The first time you open it, it will ask for the "Publishable key" you noted earlier. You may specify the template id but don't need it for this application. If you want to change this information, you can do it through the "Configure Clerk" link in the sign-in dialog.
  • You will see the sign-in dialog once you specify the publishable key.
  • Once you sign in, you will see the user's profile picture near the key icon to indicate the currently signed-in user.

Try various queries and mutations. For example, create a todo:

mutation {
createTodo(data: { title: "Buy milk", completed: true }) {
id
title
completed
}
}

Or query the todos:

query {
todos {
id
title
completed
}
}

Please see the earlier blog for a list of queries and mutations to try.

Now log out and try the same queries and mutations. You will get an error when you try to create a todo (unauthenticated users can't create todos). You will also see that you don't see any todos when you query them (users can see only their todos). Login as another user; as you would expect, you won't see the todos created by the first user.

Using the frontend

Once you have explored the API, building a frontend using the same queries and mutations is easy. The accompanying source code is a Next.js app that allows creating todos, marking them as completed, and updating or deleting them.

You can sign in as different users and see how the access control rule works (one user will not be able to see or change another user's todos).

Summary

Combining the declarative backend of Exograph with the authentication of Clerk was a breeze. It took us just four lines of code and a single-line modification to the model to make the todo app multi-user. The integration with Clerk's UI in the playground makes it easy to explore the API without building a frontend.

There is more that we didn't explore here, such as using custom templates. For example, we could use these to implement role-based access control to allow admins to see all todos. All we would have to change is add one line to the context (@jwt role: String) and modify another to add || AuthContext.role == "admin" to the access control rule! Such is the power of Exograph's declarative modeling and access control expressions. Please see the documentation for more details.

We would love to hear your feedback on this integration on our Discord.

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Mercury Retrograde: Access Control with a Planetary Twist

· 4 min read
Ramnivas Laddad
Co-founder @ Exograph

Mercury going retrograde is a serious affair, at least according to Reddit discussions. Mercury being the God of communication, supposedly, its (apparent) retrograde movement causes communication breakdowns leading to network outages, server crashes, data loss, and so on. Some take it quite seriously. There is even a Zapier integration to notify you in Slack when Mercury is about to retrograde. Well, it is about to happen tomorrow! So let me hurry up and publish this post before it is too late 😄.

The astronomical explanation for Mercury retrograde

Astronomically, it is an interesting phenomenon, quite nicely visualized here.

With a good explainer here.

In the previous blog, we dealt with access control to express the ownership relation: a todo must be accessible to only those who own it, with some role-based exceptions. However, sometimes you need to go beyond role-based and ownership-based rules. Rather than supporting specific authorization policies that eventually prove too limiting, Exograph takes a different approach through its context mechanism. This mechanism opens the door to implementing even esoteric rules, such as "no deployment when Mercury is retrograde".

Setting up the context

Implementing such a rule in Exograph requires introducing a new context whose field represents Mercury's retrograde status. In Exograph, a context represents information extracted from the incoming request (headers, cookies, IP address) and the environment variables. Exograph includes a general mechanism where users can write custom code to populate the context. That is what we will use to implement the Mercury retrograde rule.

To implement custom context extraction logic, you need to:

  • Write a GraphQL query to return the computed value of interest (in our case, whether Mercury is retrograde)
  • Use the @query annotation to bind the value of the query to a context field (in our case, a boolean field)

Let's start by writing TypeScript code to determine if Mercury is retrograde. We will use https://mercuryretrogradeapi.com/ for that (quite an interesting service deployed to 5+ geographically distributed servers!).

astro.ts
export function isMercuryRetrograde(): bool {
let result = await fetch("https://mercuryretrogradeapi.com");
let json = await result.json();
return json.is_retrograde;
}

Then, we need to bind this query to a context field. We will use the @query annotation to do that.

index.exo
@deno("astro.ts")
module AstroModule {
query isMercuryRetrograde(): bool
}

context AstroContext {
@query("isMercuryRetrograde") mercuryRetrograde: bool
}

Here, the AstroModule exposes a single isMercuryRetrograde query that returns a boolean value. We use this query to populate the mercuryRetrograde context variable.

Expressing access control rules

Finally, let's write an example resource—Deployment—that we want to protect against mercury's shenanigans. We do now want any mutations to Deployment when Mercury is retrograde.

index.exo
@postgres
module DeploymentModule {
@access(query = true, mutation = !AstroContext.mercuryRetrograde)
type Deployment {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
version: String
}
}
Source Code

Play along by cloning the examples repository.

Here, we allow anyone to query the deployment. But we disallow mutations when Mercury is retrograde (you could combine this with other rules, for example, to restrict mutations to admin users only).

Testing the rule

Let's start the server:

exo yolo

You will see output similar to this:

...
Started server on localhost:9876 in 5.35 ms
- Playground hosted at:
http://localhost:9876/playground
- Endpoint hosted at:
http://localhost:9876/graphql

Visit the playground URL and try to create a new deployment:

mutation {
createDeployment(data: { version: "1" }) {
id
}
}

If you try it while Mercury is not retrograde, it will succeed.

{
"data": {
"createDeployment": {
"id": 1
}
}
}

But if you try it while Mercury is retrograde (the next such thing will happen between August 23, 2023 and September 14, 2023), you will get an error:

{
"errors": [
{
"message": "Not authorized"
}
]
}

The same thing will happen if you try to update or delete the deployment:

mutation {
updateDeployment(id: 1, data: { version: "2" }) {
id
version
}
}
mutation {
deleteDeployment(id: 1) {
id
}
}

There is no escaping the access rule!

Conclusion

This fun little exercise shows how Exograph can be used to implement flexible access control rules. Besides built-in context sources, such as the JWT token, header, cookie, and environment variable, Exograph allows sourcing rules from a query implemented using Typescript/JavaScript running in Deno. This separation of context extraction logic from access control expressions enables easy implementation of even weird rules in Exograph.

What's next? Does someone want to implement "No Friday the 13th" rule? Or "No full moon" rule? Or "No deployment on the day of the week that ends with 'y'" rule? Exograph got you covered!

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Evolving Access Control with Exograph

· 9 min read
Ramnivas Laddad
Co-founder @ Exograph
Luke Taylor
Co-founder @ Exograph

Applications, like ideas, begin small and grow over time. Initially, an app might be a single-user demo for your next unicorn startup. If it resonates with your user base, the natural progression involves scaling it to accommodate multiple users. At this point, you need authentication, access control, and administrative functionality.

Adapting your domain model to new requirements is essential and Exograph provides robust support for this process. As your domain evolves, you can easily update the Exograph model to match it. As the model changes, the GraphQL API is automatically synchronized with the model. Exograph also helps manage database migrations. As changes in access control demands arise, you can easily represent them in your model. Additionally, Exograph enables declarative testing, minimizing the risk of regressions as adaptations unfold.

In this blog, we will focus on how Exograph streamlines the evolution of access control rules. We will develop a todo app from scratch starting with a single-user application with no authentication. We will then migrate it into a multi-user platform—complete with authentication and access control. We will see how Exograph makes this transition seamless.

The accompanying code (simple, with authentication) includes a frontend implemented with Next.js, Tailwind, Apollo GraphQL Client, and TypeScript.

Building the single-user version

Let's create an app with no authentication and wide-open access control. Running the following commands is all we need to create the backend:

Creating the project

mkdir todo-app
cd todo-app
exo new api

The starter code defines a single type Todo with a permissive @access(true) policy that allows anyone to query or mutate todos. This access control rule may be acceptable for a local single-user todo app, but not much beyond that. We will fix that in the next section.

@postgres
module TodoDatabase {
@access(true)
type Todo {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
title: String
completed: Boolean
}
}

Now let's start the backend to explore the GraphQL API:

cd api
exo yolo

The server is now ready 🚀.

Exploring the API

Our goal is to build a frontend that allows us to create, update, and delete todos. It also shows todos by their completion status. Let's see how we can achieve this with the GraphQL API.

Open http://localhost:9876/graphql to try the GraphQL playground.

Creating todos

Let's create a todo. We can do that with the following mutation:

mutation createTodo($title: String!, $completed: Boolean!) {
createTodo(data: { title: $title, completed: $completed }) {
id
title
completed
}
}

Paste the above code in the playground. In the Variables tab, add the following JSON:

{
"title": "Buy milk",
"completed": false
}

Now, execute the mutation by clicking on the Play button. You should see the following response:

{
"data": {
"createTodo": {
"id": "1",
"title": "Buy milk",
"completed": false
}
}
}

Creating todos Creating todos

Create a couple more todos with different titles and completion status.

Updating todos

The frontend will also need to update todos. We can achieve this through the following mutation:

mutation updateTodo($id: Int!, $title: String, $completed: Boolean) {
updateTodo(id: $id, data: { title: $title, completed: $completed }) {
id
title
completed
}
}

Note that the id is required, but title and completed are optional (since we may want to update either). Try updating the title and completion status of a few todos.

Deleting todos

Deleting a todo is easy with the following mutation:

mutation deleteTodo($id: Int!) {
deleteTodo(id: $id) {
id
}
}

Listing todos

Getting all todos is trivial:

query allTodos {
todos {
id
title
completed
}
}

Getting todos by their completion status isn't much harder:

query todosByCompletionStatus($completed: Boolean!) {
todos(where: { completed: { eq: $completed } }) {
id
title
completed
}
}

This is the complete set of GraphQL operations we need to build the frontend. At this point, you may want to check out the repository and run the frontend to see how it works.

Let's move on to the next section to see how to evolve this app to support multiple users.

The multi-user version

The declarative nature of Exograph makes it easy to evolve the model and access control rules as the application grows. In our application, we need to:

  • Add a User type and introduce a relationship between Todo and User. Adding a relationship in Exograph is as easy as adding a field.
  • Add access control such that:
    • Users can only query or mutate todos that they own. However, we will make an exception for the omnipotent admins to do anything.
    • Only admins can query or mutate users.
Authentication

In this blog, we do not focus on the authentication mechanism. The accompanying code, however, includes integration with Google Identity.

Updating the model

We can express the above requirements by updating the model as follows:

context AuthContext {
@jwt("sub") id: Int
@jwt("role") role: String
}

@postgres
module TodoDatabase {
@access(self.user.id == AuthContext.id || AuthContext.role == "admin")
type Todo {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
title: String
completed: Boolean
user: User = AuthContext.id
}

@access(AuthContext.role == "admin")
type User {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
@unique email: String
firstName: String
lastName: String
profileImageUrl: String
role: String = "user"
todos: Set<Todo>?
}
}

Let's unpack the changes we have made:

  1. Introduce the User type: We introduce a User type to represent the owner of todos (#17).
  2. Establishing relationships: User needs to own Todos, so we set up a one-to-many relationship with Todo by adding a todos field (#24). We also add a user field to Todo to establish the reverse relationship (#13).
  3. Establishing context: We need to know who is accessing the APIs. Therefore, we introduce AuthContext with the id and role fields sourced from the incoming JWT token (#1-#4).
  4. Securing todos: Since we want each Todo to be accessed only by its owner, we express this using self.user.id == AuthContext.id. Here self refers to the current object, which is a Todo. We also added || AuthContext.role == "admin" to allow admins to do anything (#8).
  5. Securing users: The rule for User is even simpler: only admins can query or mutate users (#16).
  6. Setting defaults: Notice the default value of the user is set to AuthContext.id (#13). This allows the user to create a todo without explicitly specifying the user argument to the createTodo mutation (Exograph will automatically associate the current user with the created todo).This also ensures that the queries and mutations used in the single-user version will continue to work unchanged (where specifying the user wasn't even an option). We also set the role field to "user" by default (#23).

Exploring the API

Let's try it out. Exograph's playground makes it easy to create authorization tokens for various users to test scenarios with various users.

  1. Open the playground at http://localhost:9876/graphql.
  2. Click on the Authentication sidebar on the left.
  3. Fill in the JWT secret and the payload and hit the "Update Authorization Token" button.
{
"role": "admin"
}

Authentication Sidebar Authentication Sidebar

This will update the Authorization header with a JWT token. Let's create two users:

mutation {
u1: createUser(
data: {
email: "[email protected]"
firstName: "F1"
lastName: "L1"
profileImageUrl: "https://example.com/1.jpg"
}
) {
id
}
u2: createUser(
data: {
email: "[email protected]"
firstName: "F2"
lastName: "L2"
profileImageUrl: "https://example.com/2.jpg"
}
) {
id
}
}

Since we are running this as an admin, Exograph allows it. (Try updating the role field in the payload to user and see what happens.)

Now go back to the Authentication sidebar and update the payload:

{
"sub": 1,
"role": "user"
}

Now create a few todos for this user. Try to query all the todos (or completed/incomplete todos). You will see only the todos that you created.

Let's repeat the process for another user. Update the sub field in the payload to 2 and try the same operations, but buy items for a different breakfast to tell them apart. Maybe "Buy cereal", "Buy orange juice", and "Buy coffee"?

You can already see that the access control rules are working. Let's try to have one user update another user's todo. Still as user 2, try to update an todo created by user 1:

mutation updateTodo {
updateTodo(id: 1, data: { title: "Don't buy", completed: true }) {
id
title
completed
}
}

Since the access control rule for Todo won't allow this operation, you will get back an empty response.

Declarative Testing

The accompanying code also includes tests using Exograph to ensure that the access control rules work as expected. You can run the tests with exo test.

Play around with the playground to see how the access control rules work. You will see that no one can query or mutate users except the admin. Users can query or mutate only their todos (admins can do anything). And all we needed to express this was a few lines of declarative code.

Conclusion

In this blog, we've explored the ease with which Exograph allows refining our application's access control rules as it scales. By adjusting a few lines, we can seamlessly adapt to new demands. Experimenting with these changes within the playground gives you confidence in your rules. Notably, the rules are clear and simple expressions. This makes it easy to reason about them and to communicate them with others.

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Hello Exograph!

· 9 min read
Ramnivas Laddad
Co-founder @ Exograph
Shadaj Laddad
Co-founder @ Exograph
Luke Taylor
Co-founder @ Exograph

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Exograph: a new approach to building GraphQL backends. Exograph introduces a declarative language that lets you focus on your domain model and access control rules – you can have a backend up and running in minutes. Powered by a Rust-based runtime, Exograph ensures quick startup, efficient query execution, and minimal memory consumption. Additionally, Exograph provides a range of tools to help you get started quickly and keep pace with your application's evolving needs. Currently in preview, Exograph is available for download on our website as well as from our GitHub repository.

GraphQL has gained popularity as an API building choice due to its ability to allow clients to specify the required data, avoiding both over-fetching and under-fetching. Nevertheless, developing a GraphQL backend can be challenging and time-consuming, demanding substantial expertise in backend development to ensure security and efficiency. This is where Exograph comes in: it simplifies the process of building GraphQL backends by enabling developers to define their domain model and access control rules, without much additional complexity. The result is a highly productive approach to backend development, allowing you to focus on the unique aspects of your application. With Exograph, you can build your backend during a lunch break!

Here's a taste of Exograph. Let's say you want to build a GraphQL API for a todo app. Here is how you get it done with Exograph:

exo new todo-app
cd todo-app
exo yolo

That's it! You now have a GraphQL API with a GraphQL Playground running on http://localhost:9876/graphql waiting for you to explore.

Of course, this is partly because the "exo new" command creates a todo app as the starter code! But if you examine the starter source file, you will see that we could have done the same from scratch in no time.

@postgres
module TodoDatabase {
@access(true)
type Todo {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
title: String
completed: Boolean
}
}

Essentially, this code defines the domain model and access control rules. Exograph uses this information to generate a GraphQL API for efficiently querying and mutating your data. It handles the underlying execution of SQL queries and enforces the access control rules, relieving you of those concerns. However, Exograph goes beyond managing persistent data; it also provides the capability to extend the core functionality by adding new APIs and augmenting existing ones.

The Exograph Way

Let's briefly tour the core ideas in Exograph that make it an excellent choice for your next project's GraphQL backend. For a more comprehensive introduction, please see our documentation.

Easy Domain Modelling

Exograph provides a declarative language that lets you concisely express your backend's domain model. This language draws inspiration from TypeScript and GraphQL IDL, so if you are already familiar with these or a similar language, you will feel right at home. Additionally, the language ensures type safety, providing compile-time errors instead of runtime surprises when there are errors in the code. Since you write Exograph code in just text files, you use Git (or any other version control system) as you would with any other code making it easy to collaborate with your team and track changes.

Let's say you want to build an e-commerce backend where a department may have multiple products. You define the domain model as follows:

@postgres
module EcommerceDatabase {
@access(true)
type Product {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
name: String
description: String
price: Float
published: Boolean
department: Department
}

@access(true)
type Department {
@pk id: Int = autoIncrement()
name: String
products: Set<Product>?
}
}

Exograph VC Code Integration

Now you will get GraphQL APIs to query and mutate your data. For example, you can query all products in a department as follows:

query {
department(id: 1) {
name
products {
name
price
}
}
}

Fine-Grained Access Control

Access control is a fundamental feature of Exograph. When defining an Exograph model, you can specify access control rules alongside each element. This arrangement ensures that the rules are easy to comprehend and review. Moreover, Exograph's access control rules are highly flexible and customizable. They can be based on various factors such as user roles, the user-entity relationship, captcha verification, the time of day, or any other rules using the extensible "context" mechanism.

The earlier definition of e-commerce has a fatal flaw: anyone can query or mutate anything (due to @access(true)). Let's consider a scenario where you want to ensure that only administrators can add, update, or delete products or departments. Additionally, you want to restrict regular users to accessing only published products. You can express these requirements in Exograph as follows:

context AuthContext {
@jwt role: String
}

@postgres
module EcommerceDatabase {
@access(query=self.published || AuthContext.role=="admin", mutation=AuthContext.role=="admin")
type Product {
... same as before ...
}

@access(query=true, mutation=AuthContext.role=="admin")
type Department {
... same as before ...
}
}

Now non-admin users will get an authorization error if they try to create, update, or delete a product. Similarly, due to the self.published part of the rule, non-admin users will see only published products; it doesn't matter how they query it: directly or through a department.

Querying Through GraphiQL

Note the context element. Rather than baking specific forms of authentication into the language, Exograph provides a flexible mechanism to define your context. In this case, we define one that includes the user's role. You can then use this context in your access control rules. Combined with the extensibility offered by Deno modules, you can implement any authorization rules you need without waiting for Exograph to support it.

Extending the Core Functionality

One of the core principles of Exograph is to let developers mold the application to fit their needs. This way, developers can extend the platform rather than wait for us to implement specific functionalities.

Deno Modules

While working with data is often the dominant part of your application, it is not the whole story. You may also need to execute business logic and integrate your backend with other systems. The Deno modules support in Exograph makes this possible. You can write your business logic in TypeScript or JavaScript. In Exograph, you don't need to write separate backend (micro)services (although you can do that if you want). This embedding approach reduces the number of moving parts, simplifying the deployment process and making it easier to maintain your application.

Let's say you want to implement a GraphQL API to announce a product to possible buyers. You can implement it as follows:

@deno("announce.ts")
module ProductAnnouncement {
@access(AuthContext.role=="admin")
mutation announce(productId: Int, @inject exo: Exograph): String
}
const productQuery = `query getProduct($id: Int) { product(id: $id) { name, price } }`

export function announce(productId: number, exo: Exograph): string {
const product = exo.executeQuery(productQuery, {id: productId});
const potentialBuyers = exo.executeQuery(... analytics GraphQL query ...);
sendEmail(potentialBuyers, "New Product", `A new product ${product.name} is available`);
return "Announced";
}

Here, we declare the announce mutation. In its implementation, which may be in JavaScript or TypeScript, we use the Exo object to execute queries to get more information and send emails to potential buyers.

Interceptors

Exograph provides a mechanism to intercept main-line operations. The interceptor mechanism helps modularize cross-cutting concerns such as rate-limiting, auditing, logging, and performance monitoring. It also allows augmenting the core functionality. For instance, you can write an interceptor to email the user when they create an account. Additionally, it provides means to implement authorization rules that are not expressible in the declarative language.

Let's say, you want to audit all mutations by logging who executed what mutation and when. You can implement it as follows:

@deno("audit.ts")
module Audit {
@before("mutation *")
interceptor audit(operation: Operation, authContext: AuthContext)
}
export function audit(operation: Operation, authContext: AuthContext) {
log("Audit: ", operation.name(), authContext.id, new Date());
}

Over time, we will provide a library of interceptors for you to use out of the box. But you don't need to wait for that to happen or accept our way of implementing those concerns.

Fast and Efficient

Exograph starts fast (on a typical laptop, between 1-2 milliseconds and on AWS Lambda, around 200 milliseconds for a cold start), executes efficiently (often executing a single SQL query for even complex GraphQL queries or mutations), and uses very little memory (typically less than 64MB). These characteristics make it suitable for a wide range of applications: from small prototypes to large-scale applications and from traditional servers to serverless platforms.

Exograph's performance is partly due to the architecture that uses ahead-of-time build to reduce runtime computations and partly due to the awesomeness of the Rust programming language and the ecosystem around it.

Deployable Anywhere

You can deploy Exograph pretty much anywhere. Since the executable is a single binary, you can run it on your laptop, your data center, or a serverless platform. We also provide tools to create docker images, for example, to deploy to Fly.

Due to fast startup and low memory consumption, Exograph works well on serverless platforms. This helps to scale your application with varying demands. The exo cli supports creating and deploying your Exograph backend as an AWS Lambda function. We are working on similar tools for other serverless platforms.

Tooling for Every Stage of Development

Exograph includes a full suite of tools to support every stage of the development lifecycle: from initial development, to deployment, to maintenance. You can start with a simple "yolo" mode, where you don't need to worry about setting up the database. This mode is excellent for getting started quickly. Later, you can use the "dev" mode that automatically updates the server when you make changes. When working with databases, Exograph provides tools to create the initial schema, verify consistency between model and database, and run migrations as your code evolves.

Exograph provides a VS Code Extension to provide syntax highlighting, code completion, and error checking. It also includes a declarative way to test your GraphQL API.

This start-to-finish set of tools makes building and maintaining your GraphQL API easy.

Try Exograph Today

Exograph is currently in preview and available for download on our website. You can also find us on GitHub, Discord, and Twitter. This is just the beginning, with a lot more still to come. Please try it out and let us know how we can make it even better for you!

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