Does my frustration with Node merit switching to Elixir?

[easco]

@OvermindDL1

Apollo graphql has done wonders for node.js. It makes a huge framework less necessary, but you still have to figure out how to integrate it with your setup. While absinthe seems to fit nicely with Elixir/Phoenix out of the box.

Yep, Absinthe works with the Apollo client code just fine too!

The one caveat to this is GraphQL subscriptions. The solution that the Absinthe community provides for subscriptions relies on Phoenix Channels as the transport mechanism between a Phoenix server and the client. That means that the GraphQL client must work with the Phoenix Channels transport mechanism and an out-of-the-box Apollo client will use the websocket protocol of the Apollo Server by default.

The Apollo JavaScript client is flexible though, and the Absinthe community has used that flexibility to create a JavaScript Apollo client that handles subscriptions through Phoenix channels (see GitHub - absinthe-graphql/absinthe-socket: Core JavaScript support for Absinthe WS-based operations · GitHub). If you require subscriptions, and want to use the Apollo clients for other platforms (most notably the iOS and Android Apollo clients) they may require additional modification to tie into the transport that Absinthe Phoenix provides by default.