BRbrillout·Nov 29, 2019Submission
Show HN: RPC Between Front End and Back End (Node.js) – REST/GraphQL Alternative
5 points · Open discussionbrillout
wildcard-api
JavaScript2019–2020
brillout / wildcard-api
wildcard-api
Functions as API.
2Distinct people
24Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
369GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Functions as API.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:01:12 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month24 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-08-09 09:57:05 UTC to 2020-12-23 12:55:17 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2019 | 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Sep 2019 | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Oct 2019 | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2019 | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| Dec 2019 | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Jan 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Feb 2020 | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Mar 2020 | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2020 | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| May 2020 | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2020 | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2020 | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2020 | 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2020 | 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2020 | 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2020 | 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2020 | 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesSo true.
That said, for an API consumed by third-party developers, REST makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, which is like 98% of the APIs out there, RPC really is superior.
I've implemented a tool similar to what OP is building: Wildcard API [1]
> rather pointless HTTP semantics.
Agree. Actually, while implementing Wildcard API, I made sure to abstract away all HTTP semantics. With Wildcard, you don't think in terms of "HTTP verbs" but you think in terms of functions. Like you are naturally used to.
> It always baffled me how so-called RESTful APIs became popular
I believe REST became popular because it got lot's of exposure since all third-party APIs were using REST.
[1]: https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api
In Do we need a web API?Have a look at Wildcard API[1], it's similar to what you are building.
I'm the author. I'm glad to see that RPC is getting more and more traction.
[1] https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api
In Do we need a web API?Why GraphQL? Why not simply RPC?
E.g. for JS there is https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api. Is there something like that in Scala?
In Scala.js 1.0.0-RC1"becoming the new SQL quickly" - Prisma, who led the way on that front, abandoned this pursuit.
"Learn GraphQL" - I'm not sure you need to learn GraphQL. You need to now that GraphQL is a powerful tool for APIs consumed by third party devs, such as the GitHub or Facebook API. But for internal APIs (and more than 98% of APIs are internal!), GraphQL (and even REST) is overkill and you'd be better off with RPC, such as Wildcard API [1] or gRPC [2]. Many developers will never have to build a GraphQL API in they entire career. Only few companies need to expose their data to third parties.
[1]: https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api
[2]: https://grpc.io/
In Developer RoadmapsThere is also Wildcard API [1] for Node.js
[1]: https://github.com/reframejs/wildcard-api
In Developer Roadmaps