Server: Apollo, MikroOrm, Redis, Express, Postgresql

Followed Ben Awads's tutorial and "improved" some stuff.

Libraries

• Redis to create cookies and sessions. Sort of secure DB in the client.
• Apollo is arguably the most curated graphql library.
• MikroOrm is a new ORM created with Graphql-Typescript in mind. Maybe replaceable with TypeORM.
• Express and Postgres are just safe.

TODO: Pack this and the nextjs frontend server in a Docker compose to deploy eazypeazy.

Other "secondary" but essential libraries:

• argon2 for password CRUD
• ioredis, connect-redis and express-session for Cookies and Authentication.
• uuid for token and ids generation.
• nodemailer as a "forgot password" solution.

Everything is 100% Typed.

Development

Start the graphql playground to see documentation and send queries to the server.

1. Clone project
2. yarn install
3. Install and start a redis-server (for macos)
4. Start a Postgres DB and configure it in src/mikro-orm.config.ts.
5. npm run script dev-ts
6. Open localhost:4000/graphql in any browser.

How it plays together

The magic happens in index.ts, TLDR:

1. Initialize Express.
2. Configure CORS's whitelist for easy Development.
3. Initialize Redis to access req/resp headers from the Express app.
4. Initialize MikroOrm and configure the Postgresql driver.
5. Customize Apollo configuration to connect it with Redis and MikroOrm.
6. Initialize server

Custom Apollo Context

1. Build the Graphql schemas.
2. Create custom context function: 2.1. Extend Apollo-Express config to add MikroOrm and redis client as context arguments 2.2. Return Custom Express+Redis+ORM Config object for Apollo.
3. Voila, access Redis Sessions and ORM from Graphql Resolvers.

Redis Cookies Login explained

Challenge: store user data between HTTP requests (associate a request to any other request).

• Cookies and URL parameters transport data between the client and the server.
• Unfortunately Cookies and URL values are both readable and on the client side.

Sessions solve that problem, hiding the values from cookies/URLs. How?

• Assign the client request an ID and stores the id in a cookie.
• Client makes all further requests using that ID-Cookie.
• Redis DB in the server store key-value pairs where the key is the client ID from the cookie.
• The server retrieves the values with the given key from the request and use them for whatever.
• The server returns only the result and id-key but not the values.

Session context is:

• in the request header, thanks to express-session
• generated again with every new request.
• accessible within Graphql the resolvers