About the Code

The sample code and examples included in this book are written using the Elixir programming language, and will focus on how to use Absinthe,^[1] the GraphQL toolkit for Elixir. As the authors of Absinthe, we can’t wait to show you the ropes.

Absinthe is distributed as a number of separate, focused packages, and we’ll be using several; absinthe provides the core GraphQL functionality, absinthe_plug supports handling requests over HTTP/S, and absinthe_phoenix adds support for GraphQL subscriptions over Phoenix channels. You learn about each of these, and more related packages, as we build out the examples.

System Dependencies

The Elixir example code for the book assumes that you’ve installed the following system dependencies. This can be done by using your favorite package manager or downloading and installing them as pre-built binaries from the associated websites.

• Erlang^[2] (v20.0+)
• Elixir^[3] (v1.5.0+)
• PostgreSQL^[4] (v9.4+)

The final chapter of the book covers integration with JavaScript client-side frameworks, and we recommend Node.js^[5] v8.9.0+.