Running Apollo Server

Pre-requisites:

• Node js
• Npm
• VS Code

1. Create a new project. In my case it’s apollo-testing.
2. Open the code in VS Code.
3. Create a file name “index.js” inside the folder
4. Open terminal in VS code and execute below commands. npm init -y converts your folder into Node js project with package.json file inside it. npm install apollo-server graphql installs apollo-server and graphql dependencies.

npm init -y
npm install apollo-server graphql

After installing the npm package, the folder structure should look like this:

5. Copy the content and paste it inside index.js file. The content has been copied from official doc of Apollo Server.

const { ApolloServer, gql } = require('apollo-server');
// A schema is a collection of type definitions (hence "typeDefs")
// that together define the "shape" of queries that are executed against
const typeDefs = gql`
# This "Book" type defines the queryable fields for every book in our data source.
type Book {
title: String
author: String
}
# The "Query" type is special: it lists all of the available queries that
# clients can execute, along with the return type for each. In this
# case, the "books" query returns an array of zero or more Books (defined above).
type Query {
books: [Book]
}
`;
const books = [
{
title: 'The Awakening',
author: 'Kate Chopin',
},
{
title: 'City of Glass',
author: 'Paul Auster',
},
];
// Resolvers define the technique for fetching the types defined in the
// schema. This resolver retrieves books from the "books" array above.
const resolvers = {
Query: {
books: () => books,
},
};
// The ApolloServer constructor requires two parameters: your schema
// definition and your set of resolvers.
const server = new ApolloServer({ typeDefs, resolvers });
// The `listen` method launches a web server.
server.listen().then(({ url }) => {
console.log(`🚀  Server ready at ${url}`);
});

6. Now we are good to go. To run start and run the apollo server, we need to execute this command in the terminal.

node index.js

Following output should be visible:

🚀 Server ready at http://localhost:4000/

Congrats, the server is running now.