At Bjerk we develop applications lean and rapidly, these days we use Angular 6 for frontend applications and AWS or Google Firebase on our backend. Mostly AWS, honestly.
However, we’re here to talk about AWS AppSync. First of all, I want to give a shoutout to AWS for providing this awesome service. AppSync serves as a kind of GraphQL as a Service deal, where implementation is easier and more rapid than using Serverless, and it’s rock solid and production-ready. At Bjerk we’re currently releasing our first application that is AppSync-based, and I’ve had some time to reflect on what makes it good.
- Easy to prototype (also, get started)
- Easy to scale.
- Rock solid infrastructure.
- Real-time ❤️
When we tested out AWS AppSync for Tabetalt.no, a service we build here at Bjerk, I was worried that the only good way to build AppSync APIs was through the management console. Honestly, I don’t like to be forced to use it, it’s a bit messy when there is more than one developer. After some research I found that was attacking the problem, with a Serverless-plugin. The API still needs some work, but we are certainly getting there!
Worried by building a monolith before knowing if AppSync is a thing for the future, we decided to make our first AppSync-application, Teach Me, through the management console. Teach Me is a learning application, currently we are making the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The idea is to port the application into the Serverless framework with Siddharth’s plugin later.
The learning curve was amazing, we got all our developers onboard pretty much the same day. Some of them hadn’t learned GraphQL yet, but it’s quite simple to learn. (Tip: Depending on what size of project you want to try out AppSync on, you should consider to create it with Serverless and a repository early on. We have about 11 GraphQL types, three developers on this project, and it’s a bit of a hassle actually. Or use CloudFormation) Since we’ve been using Serverless for a couple of years now, we added all of our Lambda code through a Serverless project to keep those things rockin’ and pretty from the start.
All in all – I love AppSync. I promise to keep you updated on the process going forward!