Our ongoing journey from REST to GraphQL on Android
summary
Migration begins end of 2020 and moves stepwise from a REST monolith to GraphQL, with AppSync backend, Apollo Kotlin client and Retrofit coexists with Apollo during transition. Generated Kotlin models and coroutines work well; subscriptions required building a custom AppSync websocket reopen strategy using a lambda to update auth URLs (contributed and merged). Nested queries once caused 7–10s responses until backend added an optimized resolver or exposed lastMessage field. Use separate OkHttp clients/timeouts and Chucker for monitoring.
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chapters (28)
- 0:00GraphQL migration journey
- 1:27What is GraphQL
- 2:55Switching from REST to GraphQL
- 4:42GraphQL adoption benefits
- 5:46GraphQL tech stack on Android
- 7:15GraphQL migration timeline
- 7:58Apollo setup in Android
- 9:24GraphQL schema and queries
- 10:54Mutations and subscriptions
- 12:01GraphQL plugins experience
- 13:12Apollo client integration
- 14:16Migration lessons learned
- 14:39Apollo Kotlin support
- 16:09Queries with coroutines and flows
- 18:01Timeout configuration
- 18:45Lazy loading resources
- 19:48Monitoring with Chucker
- 21:55Chucker request demo
- 23:02Nested query challenges
- 25:30Real-time updates with subscriptions
- 26:14WebSocket reliability with AppSync
- 28:20Contributing to Apollo Kotlin
- 31:14GraphQL error handling
- 33:48Automating schema updates
- 35:59Managing multiple schemas
- 36:41Apollo community updates
- 38:10Apollo v4 features
- 38:31Key takeaways
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