I'm doing my first GraphQL project. For those of you using AppSync are you using codegen to manage resolvers?

@Mike McCall helped me a lot with the

AppSyncApi

construct. I surely asked him a lot of noob questions back then 😅

We are using codegen to generate schema types. We try to use dynamo datasource and vtl resolvers as much as possible. Pipeline resolver are really nice too and you can leverage multiple datasources in a single pipeline. Conflict detection with appsync is also really cool!

Nice - sounds roughly the same. I've got everything going but now setting up subscriptions + websocket. Really scared of the amplify library so seeing if I can avoid it

Amplify is fine for the libraries and especially helpful with auth. I'd avoid the cli/IaC part of it.

I ended up getting it working without amplify, wasn't too crazy

Look forward to seeing it. I've used apollo with token auth but haven't dug too deep with using cognito auth with anything other than amplify. AWS pushes that shit hard.

agree 100% about the Amplify CLI. it’s not done too well IMO.. too hand-holdey to the point of obscuring what’s going on, and when something goes wrong & breaks, sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to fix it.

I really wanted Amplify to work but shifted away. Tried straight AppSync but eventually went to Apollo Server running on a lambda with https://typegraphql.com/. We use codegen to generate apollo client react hooks. Been pretty happy with the setup. I feel that Amplify will be awesome in like 3-4 years but right now just isn't there yet. Looking forward to seeing the project!

one of the big benefits of AppSync is that it seamlessly integrates with Cognito (if you’re using it, of course).

Agree, cognito integration with appsync is really nice.

that’s good to know. they need to add U2F/FIDO support

AppSync team is working on replacing VTL with JS runtime functions that you can edit from the console or define inline inside CDK.

VTL was the worst decision IMO

Yes, terrible to debug. But the performance is unmatched by Lambda resolvers? There must be some reason for the tradeoff. There’s always a tradeoff in life.

I don't find Amplify to be that bad. The Auth and AppSync packages are useful and work great

I avoided amplify for auth too by using the underlying library that amplify uses

@thdxr are you saying there is a better package than @aws-amplify/auth that I can use instead? (For the sake of removing all traces of Amplify)

Can't wait to see the final example! I've had no issue with amplify Auth, Api, and subscriptions. I think the Amplify team (while understaffed and frustratingly slow for some issues) get some flak for service issues they can't control. I don't envy anybody on that team. I think they might be too ambitious and sacrifice quality for speed. That being said I do think the pros outweigh the cons. There's things to like about it outside of Auth and Api such as Hub, Analytics (event tracking), Hosting, etc.

Yeah for me I ultimately wanted to use URQL and using both that and Amplify felt like I'd be bringing in a lot of code and didn't want to verify if stuff was tree-shaken properly

That's awesome. In my opinion one of the most frustrating things is lack of alternatives or a least examples of them.

@Joe Kendal what kinds of disastrous bugs are there in AppSync subscriptions?

“disastrous”? it’s possible you’re being a bit sensationalist 😉 I haven’t had any issues other than expected timeouts, which I can catch & just reestablish the subscription.

I meant in the SDK not the API

I do wish they had a reconnect option for dropped websocket connections. I should open an issue

@Sam Hulick sorry, this is the link I meant to send https://github.com/awslabs/aws-mobile-appsync-sdk-js/issues/509#issuecomment-932639985

@Joe Kendal interesting, can’t say I’ve had that issue, thankfully.