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Quick Start

For dev mode or small projects, Grats offers a runtime extraction mode. This is the easiest way to get started with Grats, although you may find that it causes a slow startup times. For larger projects, you probably want to use the build mode (documentation to come).

Install dependencies​

Grats can be used with many different GraphQL servers, but this example uses graphql-express.

npm install express express-graphql typescript graphql@^16.6.0 grats

:::

npm install --dev @types/express @types/express-graphql

Initialize TypeScript​

caution

Grats uses your TypeScript config to for its configuration and to know which files to scan, so ensure your project has a tsconfig.json file defined.

Create a tsconfig.json in your project root:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "strictNullChecks": true
  }
}

Create your server​

For this quick start example, we'll use extractGratsSchemaAtRuntime which will extract your schema at runtime. This is the easiest way to get started with Grats, but it can cause a slow startup time. For production, we recommend using the build mode.

/server.ts
import * as express from "express";
import { graphqlHTTP } from "express-graphql";
import { extractGratsSchemaAtRuntime } from "grats";

/** @gqlType */
class Query {
  /** @gqlField */
  hello(): string {
    return "Hello world!";
  }
}

const app = express();

// TODO: Switch to buildSchemaFromSDL before using in production
const schema = extractGratsSchemaAtRuntime({
  emitSchemaFile: "./schema.graphql",
});

app.use(
  "/graphql",
  graphqlHTTP({ schema, rootValue: new Query(), graphiql: true }),
);
app.listen(4000);
console.log("Running a GraphQL API server at http://localhost:4000/graphql");

Start your server​

# Build your projects
npx tsc
# Run your server. NOTE: This is the generated `.js` file adjacent to your `.ts` file.
node ./server.js

Next steps​

Once you have Grats working in your code case, you can proceed to setup for production with the Runtime API docs, and read about Workflows to learn how to integrate Grats into your develop ment workflows.