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Notes from trying the three most popular GraphQL extensions for VSCode
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README.md

VSCode extensions for GraphQL

Quick research and comparison.

Apollo

Notes from May 2019, slightly updated in July 2020:

  • Relatively good experience, released regularly, seems to be getting reasonable attention from its authors
  • There's no validation of the schema (apollographql/apollo-tooling#1287) and no Go to Definition within the schema (apollographql/apollo-tooling#1238)
  • Queries in gql`...` literals are supported much better.
    • UPDATE July 2020: That's because ❗️ Apollo's extension is "only" about the client – their tagline is "Rich editor support for GraphQL client and server development that seamlessly integrates with the Apollo platform" but I don't think this is true – all the features are about consuming schemas, not creating them.
  • Uses non-standard apollo.config.js format (apollographql/apollo-tooling#811)

Prisma

Notes from May 2019, updated in July 2020:

  • Looked promising from the description but I couldn't get the advertised features work ❗️ – no errors anywhere, just silently not working.
  • Doesn't seem to be very actively developed – last release 3 months ago
    • UPDATE July 2020: @acao (Rikki Schulte) is now a maintainer of this extension, besides generally working on the GraphiQL ecosystem (which will also incorporate GraphQL Playground, another project previously maintained by Prisma). At this point, the extension is still not working for me (no errors, just silently doesn't work) but there are promising issues: prisma-labs/vscode-graphql#181 and graphql/graphiql#1615, that indicate a lot of WIP around this extension. It looks promising!

Kumar

Notes from May 2019, then updated in September 2019 and July 2020:

  • Does schema validation & error reporting
  • Has 'Go to Definition' – both within the schema and from queries to schema
  • Has 'Find References' within the schema
    • Scanning queries is planned as well
  • Requires manual installation of @playlyfe/gql & watchman – a bit annoying
  • Requires its own .gqlconfig file
  • ❗️ Does not support descriptions ("""), due to this upstream issue. It's quite bad for me.
  • ❗️ The project didn't see much activity in the past few months (I'm writing this in September 2019) which concerns me.
    • UPDATE July 2020: Still not updated after almost a year. I now believe that the activity by Rikki and others in the GraphiQL monorepo (which also includes LSP and other key pieces of GraphQL tooling infrastructure), plus transfers of previously Prisma-owned projects like graphql-config or the VSCode extension to active maintainers, have a better chance in the near future.
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