How to Insomnia for GraphQL requests

Complete video tutorial is online! Please check the playlist here. Total time would be in 8 minutes.

Mark Feng
2 min readAug 17, 2019
  1. Explore Github GraphQL API: https://youtu.be/fX7mxRCDgJI
  2. Download Insomnia client: https://youtu.be/Y2a68Zacv84
  3. Authenticate request: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZCw5dcu5Yg
  4. Useful features for editing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkbTV_Q1a9Q
  5. How to share my workspace?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KkpFAYOkA

Use cases when we work with a GraphQL endpoint

  • Send my first request to a new GraphQL endpoint
  • Introspection query to fetch the schema
  • Manage environment-related variables like the authentication token
  • Manage a bunch of queries
  • Save/Share requests with others

How to use Insomnia to manage my requests?

Please check the complete youtube videos for a demo!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL13mreFCu1Josp4PCNb1WlOiaRY6p73D1

Here we’re going to communicate with Github’s public GraphQL API. Basic steps would be:

  1. Automatic fetch GraphQL Schema from the endpoint.
  2. Authenticating the requests through a personal access token, set the token as an environment variable.
  3. Construct your query with the auto-complete feature enabled. Use variables when needed.
  4. Send and check your response, work on fixing errors.
  5. Export your current workspace and send it to your teammates. (Or use ‘Share’ feature which requires a Insomnia Plus subscription. 💰)
If you’re in Singapore, welcome to join our meetup! https://www.meetup.com/GraphQL-SG/

References

Originally published at https://www.usegitflow.com.

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