Introduction to the Newline guide to building your first GraphQL server with Node and TypeScript.

Welcome, Getting Started

Quick walkthrough of the development environment and tools used in the course.

A Node, TypeScript, and GraphQL Developer Environment

Introduction

This is an introduction to the work we'll be doing in Module 1.0.

Module 1 Introduction

Node is a JavaScript runtime environment that can run on different platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.). It was first introduced in 2009 by Ryan Dahl, as a response to how slow web servers were at the time. In this lesson, we'll introduce Node and talk about the capability Node provides to make I/O tasks asynchronous and non-blocking.

What is Node.js? A Beginner's Guide.

In this lesson, we'll use Node to run a simple JavaScript file on the server.

How to Run a JavaScript File with Node.js

Web servers provide functionality for requests that can be made from client applications. Node has a built-in HTTP module that provides the capability to create a server. With this lesson, we'll look to use the popular Express framework as the replacement of the core HTTP module to create a minimal Node server, with Express routing.

How to Create a Minimal Express Node.js Server

Nodemon is an open-source utility tool that helps automatically restart a Node server whenever a change in code is detected in development. In this lesson, we'll install Nodemon and introduce an application script that will start the Node server with Nodemon.

How to Automatically Reload a Node.js Server with Nodemon

JavaScript is considered a weakly typed language. In this lesson, we'll go through a simple example of why that can be an issue in development and where TypeScript falls in the picture.

What is TypeScript? A Beginner's Guide

We'll get started with TypeScript in this lesson by installing a few necessary packages in our server and setting up the configuration of our TypeScript compiler.

How to Set up a Node.js Server with TypeScript

TypeScript is a development tool geared towards making building JavaScript applications more robust. In an application's deployed state (browser or server), TypeScript must be compiled to valid JavaScript. In this lesson, we'll see how the TypeScript compiler provides us with a command to compile and produce JavaScript code from TypeScript.

How to Compile a TypeScript Node.js Project

Though VSCode includes TypeScript language support which helps us pick up TypeScript errors in our TypeScript code, we'll introduce more robust code checking with ESLint - a popular open-source JavaScript/TypeScript linting tool.

How to use ESLint to Check TypeScript Code for Issues

To help us get started, we'll begin by introducing a mock data array of rental listings in this lesson. This will help us get started before we begin to address more appropriate data persistence.

Build Example Mock Data to Test a GraphQL Server

In this lesson, we'll use the routing capabilities Express gives us to create GET and POST routes that interact with the mock data listings array we've established.

How to Build an Express API with GET and POST Routes

This lesson is a summary of the work we've done in Module 1.0 where we built a very simple Node/Express/Typescript project.

Module 1 Summary

Getting Started With Our Node Server

In this module, we'll explain what GraphQL is, compare Github's REST and GraphQL APIs, and dive deeper into some core concepts of GraphQL.

Introduction to Module 2

GraphQL is a query language for APIs. In this lesson, we go through an initial discussion on GraphQL and how GraphQL differs from traditional REST APIs.

A GraphQL Tutorial for Beginners

Before we continue discussing some of the core concepts in GraphQL, we'll take a bit of a tangent in this lesson to contrast and compare Github's existing REST API (v3) and their GraphQL API (v4). We'll dive into a good example that showcases GraphQL before we discuss and address some of GraphQL's core concepts.

GraphQL vs REST APIs, and When to Use GraphQL

In this lesson, we introduce and discuss some of GraphQL's main concepts such as the GraphQL schema, object types and resolver functions.

GraphQL Schema, Object Types, and Function Examples

Comparing REST & GraphQL APIs

In this module, we'll install Apollo Server and the GraphQL JavaScript library, create a GraphQL Schema, build GraphQL resolver functions to interact with our mock data, and recreate our schema with the much simpler GraphQL Schema Language.

Introduction to Module 3

In this lesson, we'll install the Express variation of the popular Apollo Server library and the GraphQL JavaScript library.

How to Install Apollo Server for GraphQL

In this lesson, we'll use the Apollo Server and GraphQL JavaScript libraries to create a minimal GraphQL API that we'll be able to interact with in an IDE environment known as GraphQL Playground.

How to Build a GraphQL Schema with GraphQL.js

In this lesson, we'll look to mimic the listings retrieval and manipulation we had in our Express RESTful API but with GraphQL instead.

How to Use GraphQL Mutations and Queries

The GraphQL schema language is a human-readable syntax to help create GraphQL schemas. In this lesson, we'll use the GraphQL schema language to re-create the schema we have in a more readable and simpler format.

A Beginner's Guide to GraphQL Schema Language

This lesson is a summary of the final state of the work done in Module 3.0.

Module 3 Summary

Using Apollo Server To Create The GraphQL API

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Conclusion

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In this course, we'll be creating a [Node](https://nodejs.org/en/) server from scratch with the help of the [Express](https://expressjs.com/) framework. We'll then introduce the benefits of strongly-typed code and integrate [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org) into our Node server application.

We will compare GitHub's old RESTful API against its new GraphQL API. We will explore the problems GraphQL aims to solve. And finally, we will create our own GraphQL API using [Apollo](https://www.apollographql.com/)!

In this course, we'll show you how to create your first GraphQL server with Node.js and TypeScript

The newline Guide to Building Your First GraphQL Server with Node and TypeScript

How to create a Node server using Express

How to integrate TypeScript to a Node server

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title: A Node, TypeScript, and GraphQL Developer Environment
description: Quick walkthrough of the development environment and tools used in the course.
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role: "INTRODUCTION"
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# Environment Setup

We recognize everyone has their own development working environment and set-up. In this lesson, we'll discuss some of the tools and items we'll use in this course for you to either follow along with or find an appropriate replacement.

## VSCode

The code editor we'll be using in this course is [VSCode (otherwise known as Visual Studio Code)](https://code.visualstudio.com/). Though you're welcome to use any code editor of your choice, we encourage using VSCode for some of the [useful features it provides with minimal configuration changes](https://code.visualstudio.com/#meet-intellisense). As an example, [VSCode includes TypeScript language support](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/typescript) out of the box to help display TypeScript compiler errors and warnings right in our editor.

![](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/the-newline-guide-to-building-your-first-graphql-server-with-node-and-typescript/module_0/lesson_0.1/public/assets/vscode-typescript-support.png)

As we proceed through the course, we'll periodically be installing [extensions](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension-gallery) to plug additional and useful functionality in our editor workspace. We'll have two extensions installed from the get-go with others we'll install at other points of the course.

A Node, TypeScript, and GraphQL Developer Environment

Environment Setup
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VSCode
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A Node, TypeScript, and GraphQL Developer Environment

Environment Setup#

VSCode#

Environment Setup
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VSCode
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