> I have only seen null vs undefined lead to 2 things in my experience: mistakes and bikeshedding.
I disagree, though I think the implementation leaves something to be desired. Primarily, I think there is fundamentally a difference between the value of obj.bar in the following examples that is useful to differentiate between:
{ foo: 'hello' }
{ foo: 'hello', bar: null }
For example, GraphQL makes specific use of this when dealing with input types for mutations: null essentially means "delete this field" while unset means "don't change it".
There is a very good discussion on this topic here, https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/issues/133 , which goes into the rationale behind it, how it's supported in languages that do NOT differentiate between null and undefined, and how some folks changed their minds on the issue.
In Tricks I wish I knew when I learned TypeScriptgraphql
graphql-js
TypeScript2015–2021
graphql / graphql-js
graphql-js
A reference implementation of GraphQL for JavaScript
24Distinct people
27Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
20.3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A reference implementation of GraphQL for JavaScript
GitHub
Where it is used
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What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year27 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-07-02 10:38:10 UTC to 2021-10-12 18:33:01 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
GraphQL.js
The JavaScript reference implementation for GraphQL, a query language for APIs created by Facebook.
See more complete documentation at https://graphql.org/ and
https://graphql.org/graphql-js/.
Looking for help? Find resources from the community.
Getting Started
A general overview of GraphQL is available in the
README for the
Specification for GraphQL. That overview
describes a simple set of GraphQL examples that exist as tests
in this repository. A good way to get started with this repository is to walk
through that README and the corresponding tests in parallel.
Using GraphQL.js
Install GraphQL.js from npm
With npm:
npm install --save graphql
With yarn:
yarn add graphql
With bun:
bun add graphql
GraphQL.js provides two important capabilities: building a type schema and
serving queries against that type schema.
First, build a GraphQL type schema which maps to your codebase.
import {
graphql,
GraphQLSchema,
GraphQLObjectType,
GraphQLString,
} from 'graphql';
var schema = new GraphQLSchema({
query: new GraphQLObjectType({
name: 'RootQueryType',
fields: {
hello: {
type: GraphQLString,
resolve() {
return 'world';
},
},
},
}),
});
This defines a simple schema, with one type and one field, that resolves
to a fixed value. The resolve function can return a value, a promise,
or an array of promises. A more complex example is included in the top-level tests directory.
Then, serve the result of a query against that type schema.
var source = '{ hello }';
graphql({ schema, source }).then((result) => {
// Prints
// {
// data: { hello: "world" }
// }
console.log(result);
});
This runs a query fetching the one field defined. The graphql function will
first ensure the query is syntactically and semantically valid before executing
it, reporting errors otherwise.
var source = '{ BoyHowdy }';
graphql({ schema, source }).then((result) => {
// Prints
// {
// errors: [
// { message: 'Cannot query field BoyHowdy on RootQueryType',
// locations: [ { line: 1, column: 3 } ] }
// ]
// }
console.log(result);
});
Want to ride the bleeding edge?
The npm branch in this repository is automatically maintained to be the last
commit to 17.x.x to pass all tests, in the same form found on npm. It is
recommended to use builds deployed to npm for many reasons, but if you want to use
the latest not-yet-released version of graphql-js, you can do so by depending
directly on this branch:
npm install graphql@git://github.com/graphql/graphql-js.git#npm
Using in a Browser
GraphQL.js is a general-purpose library and can be used both in a Node server
and in the browser. As an example, the GraphiQL
tool is built with GraphQL.js!
Building a project using GraphQL.js with webpack or
rollup should just work and only include
the portions of the library you use. This works because GraphQL.js is distributed
with both CommonJS (require()) and ESModule (import) files. The exports
map within the project package.json should direct runtimes and bundlers to
the appropriate files. Tools that do not support exports will find the CommonJS
and ESModule builds side by side, with the CommonJS code packaged
in files with the .js extension and the ESModule build within .mjs files.
Contributing
We actively welcome pull requests. Learn how to contribute.
This repository is managed by EasyCLA. Project participants must sign the free GraphQL Specification Membership agreement before making a contribution. You only need to do this one time, and it can be signed by individual contributors or their employers.
To initiate the signature process please open a PR against this repo. The EasyCLA bot will block the merge if we still need a membership agreement from you.
You can find detailed information here. If you have issues, please email operations@graphql.org.
If your company benefits from GraphQL and you would like to provide essential financial support for the systems and people that power our community, please also consider membership in the GraphQL Foundation.
Changelog
Changes are tracked as GitHub releases.
License
GraphQL.js is MIT-licensed.
Version Support
GraphQL.JS follows Semantic Versioning (SemVer) for its releases. Our version support policy is as follows:
Latest Major Version: We provide full support, including bug fixes and security updates, for the latest major version of GraphQL.JS.
Previous Major Version: We offer feature support for the previous major version for 12 months after the release of the newest major version.
This means that for 12 months we can backport features for specification changes if they don't cause any breaking changes. We'll continue
supporting the previous major version with bug and security fixes.
Older Versions: Versions older than the previous major release are considered unsupported. While the code remains available,
we do not actively maintain or provide updates for these versions.
One exception to this rule is when the older version has been released < 1 year ago, in that case we
will treat it like the "Previous Major Version".
Long-Term Support (LTS)
We do not currently offer a Long-Term Support version of GraphQL.JS. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest stable version
to receive the most up-to-date features, performance improvements, and security updates.
End-of-Life (EOL) Schedule
We will announce the EOL date for a major version at least 6 months in advance.
After a version reaches its EOL, it will no longer receive updates, even for critical security issues.
Upgrade Assistance
To assist users in upgrading to newer versions:
We maintain detailed release notes for each version, highlighting new features, breaking changes, and deprecations.
Our documentation includes migration guides for moving between major versions.
The community forum (Discord channel #graphql-js) is available for users who need additional assistance with upgrades.
Security Updates
We prioritize the security
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
27 sourcesWhile I agree the presence of both null and undefined in JavaScript can make things a big pain in the ass, trying to get rid of null in favor of undefined is a huge mistake.
For example, a couple years ago GraphQL specifically added support for the difference between undefined and null, and it was a good change. An optional field on an input type can be left off (in which case it is undefined) or it can be explicitly set to null. For a mutation, these have very different meanings: undefined means "don't update the property" while null means "update the property to null (which usually means 'delete')". These are very different things.
This thread, https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/issues/133, is a good overview.
In Intent to stop using 'null' in my JS codeA bunch of GraphQL projects are quite well-tested e.g. the reference impl at https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js
In Against TestingFrom the thread.
'Slow response times for large documents'
https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/issues/723#issuecommen...
It seems that the graphql library is performing a lot of validation, and that's slowing things down. I expect validation to be a pure-compute task, and this is Javascript, so I suspect this is really a "working with large amounts of data in Javascript is slow" issue - but that's just at a glance.
In The dark side of GraphQL: performanceThese codebases will meet your requirements -
Zeit: https://github.com/zeit
Facebook: https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js, https://github.com/graphql/dataloader
Misc: https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-server, https://github.com/tngan/samlify, https://github.com/sindresorhus
In Ask HN: Example of good Node.js project?First, Webpack and Babel are totally used for backend. If you look at a lot of Node libraries, they use ES6 modules in their [docs](https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js). While you could use mjs for this, it's still experimental.
I do think create-react-app is a good innovation in the JS world. However, I've never found a good equivalent on the back end. Setting up even the most basic CRUD REST API requires a whole lot of typing for very little reward.
As for convention, I think JS could do with more of it. I find that when I talk about adding more convention, people take it quite literally as "we need to reinvent Rails in JS". That's not at all what I mean. Convention can be something as simple as Rack, which is a consistent, useful interface between servers. Convention does not and is not tied to monoliths or MVC or any other aspect of
Read the rest
Rails.
Good job on creating a lightweight client. Apollo can be overkill for smaller projects.
You should be careful with the name though because it's named the same as the official reference implementation of the backend: https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js.
In Graphql.js: A Simple and Isomorphic GraphQL Client for JavaScriptNo, largely because it can make query performance harder to evaluate: https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/issues/855
In SQL as an API languageAt Newsweek/The Daily Beast we used Adobe AEM which was very powerful. It had a flexible JCR-based content model and component based content editor. At the time (5 years ago) it had very little in the way of a content API so we had to build our own solution. We actually used our Content API with Rhino (Java js runtime) to render DustJS templates server-side. This server side rendering we built there inspired aspects of our Static Site Generator. Being able to load a project's GraphQL schema in memory allows us to improve caching when generating a large site.
The content modeling an initial interface was heavily inspired by a CMS we used in our agency work called Webhook (http://www.webhook.com/). It was the first product we found which combined flexible content modeling with Static Site Generation. TakeShape goes one step further to provi
Read the rest
de a robust API that can be used with by the static site to enable dynamic experiences (think search, tag pages, user generated content).
As far as GraphQL we use Facebook's reference implementation (https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js). The challenge with TakeShape is that we allow users to define their own content types which in turn generates their own GraphQL schema. This makes using high-level server libraries like Apollo which assume a static schema challenging to use. GraphQL itself takes care of a lot of the content functionality on its own. The challenge was adding all the missing pieces like authorization, authentication, rate-limiting, access policies, data validation, etc.
GraphQL is so vastly superior for validation, filtering, nested queries, relations, documentation, discoverability...
You can even have a mutation save a nested object (fragmenting it and passing it down to other handlers), which is so great.
You can make a GraphQL endpoint quite fast with https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js
In Living APIs and the Case for GraphQLFacebook switched it over to MIT last week (along with React): https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/LICENSE
In Hacker News Clone Using GraphQL and ReactSo which FB project still have a BSD+patents license.
I count:
* ReasonML - https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/PATENTS.txt
* GraphQL - https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS
* react-native - https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/PATENTS
* PlanOut - https://github.com/facebook/planout/blob/master/PATENTS
* Flow - https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/PATENTS
* Haxl - https://github.com/facebook/Haxl/blob/master/PATENTS
* Flux - https://github.com/facebook/flux/blob/master/PATENTS
Just a few that I found.. Please reply if you know more project that are still BSD+PATENTS licensed.
In Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.jsWhat? They haven't... https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS
In GraphQL Patent Infringement IssuesIt should be noted that GraphQL is covered by the same BSD + Patents licence as React.js and others. [1]
[1] - https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS
In Kick Start a JavaScript GraphQL API with Apollo-Server, Dataloader and KnexThere's a reasonable set of language specific libraries listed here: http://graphql.org/code/
Also a common pattern is wrapping an existing REST API with a GraphQL proxy: https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js
In Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensibleShowing the 15 most recent of 27 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.