Facebook's Relay for React v20 released
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relay
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relay
Relay is a JavaScript framework for building data-driven React applications.
23Distinct people
25Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
19KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Relay is a JavaScript framework for building data-driven React applications.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I really love this implementation: https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/master/packages/relay... It’s one of those really nice pieces of code that’s just small enough to get…
dmitryminkovsky used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
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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, 3:03:16 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 year25 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-08-11 20:28:38 UTC to 2025-06-14 06:48:03 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 | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Relay ·
Relay is a JavaScript framework for building data-driven React applications.
Declarative: Never again communicate with your data store using an imperative API. Simply declare your data requirements using GraphQL and let Relay figure out how and when to fetch your data.
Colocation: Queries live next to the views that rely on them, so you can easily reason about your app. Relay aggregates queries into efficient network requests to fetch only what you need.
Mutations: Relay lets you mutate data on the client and server using GraphQL mutations, and offers automatic data consistency, optimistic updates, and error handling.
See how to use Relay in your own project.
Example
The relay-examples repository contains an implementation of TodoMVC. To try it out:
git clone https://github.com/relayjs/relay-examples.git
cd relay-examples/todo
yarn
yarn grats
yarn relay
yarn dev
Then, just point your browser at http://localhost:5173.
Contribute
We actively welcome pull requests, learn how to contribute.
Users
We have a community-maintained list of people and projects using Relay in production.
License
Relay is MIT licensed.
Thanks
We'd like to thank the contributors that helped make Relay in open source possible.
The open source project relay-hooks allowed the community to experiment with Relay and React Hooks, and was a source of valuable feedback for us. The idea for the useSubscription hook originated in an issue on that repo. Thank you @morrys for driving this project and for playing such an important role in our open source community.
Thank you for helping make this possible!
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
25 sourcesThe GraphQL payload has redundant copies of the objects within. Relay has an experimental (dead) exploration of normalising data on the server[1] in order to avoid that transport cost.
For @defer, the transport is a stream[2] where subsequent payloads are tracked ("pending") and as those payloads arrive they are "patched" into the existing data at the appropriate path.
Both of these are effectively implementations of this Progressive JSON concept.
I can picture a future where both the JSX and object payloads are delivered progressively over the wire in the same stream, and hydrate React and Relay stores alike. That could potentially simplify and eliminate the need for Relay to synchronise it's own updates with React. It would also potentially be a suitable compile target for decoupling, React taking ownership of a normalised reactive obje
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ct store (with state garbage collection which is a hard problem for external stores to solve) with external tools like Relay and TanStack Query providing the type-generation & fetching implementation details.
Using `new Promise()` in the client-side store would also mean you could potentially shrink the component API to this. `useFragment(fragment IssueAssignee on Issue { assignee { name }}, issue)` could instead be `const assignee = use(issue.assignee)` and would suspend (or not) appropriately.
[1]: https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/main/packages/relay-r...
[2]: https://github.com/graphql/graphql-wg/blob/main/rfcs/DeferSt...
For a concrete example, Relay uses them to garbage collect data in an asynchronous fashion. If an update is detected during the course of a gc, it is aborted.
https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/main/packages/relay-r...
In Why would anyone need JavaScript generator functions?Not mentioned here but FB is rewriting the Relay compiler in Rust as well. Will be interesting to see how well it works.
https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/3180
Personally I've had trouble with the Relay compilers watch mode not picking up file changes but that might be a Watchman issue not a Relay compiler issue.
In A brief history of Rust at FacebookFor those relying on babel - what are the options?
One thing I haven't seen yet is support for SCSS and CSS Modules. It looks like projects on those would need to switch to emotion+styled-components or styled-system, which would be a big move.
If anyone uses relay, I started an issue here about using it with next-gen bundlers like esbuild: https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/3319
For those who don't know, relay is a graphql system by facebook. It seems dependent on babel (to my knowledge?) Two developments on this front:
1. @sciyoshi built an esbuild proof of concept for relay: https://gist.github.com/sciyoshi/34e5865f2523848f0d60b4cdd49...
2. Meanwhile, the compiler has been being quietly rewritten in rust: https://github.com/facebook/relay/tree/master/compiler. They're also claiming that it will include type generation.
In Esbuild 0.9I really love this implementation: https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/master/packages/relay...
It’s one of those really nice pieces of code that’s just small enough to get your head around but at the same time totally real and useful.
In Observables, Side-Effects, and Subscriptions: Some Reactive Best PracticesRelay supports generating Typescript types for queries as of v1.7.0
[1]: https://github.com/facebook/relay/pull/2293
[2]: https://github.com/relay-tools/relay-compiler-language-types...
In Porting 30K lines of code from Flow to TypeScriptI don't know any particular resources.
I think the core document is the Runtime Architecture[0]. After that, it really helps to know ES7 Observables, which I learned by studying the little implementation that's included in Relay[1], but apparently is also at the core of Angular. Then you can either use the runtime architecture directly, or the pre-built React components that are included in Relay. If you use the pre-built components, you need to understand the division of labor between the QueryRenderer[2], which fetches data from your server and puts it in the store, and FragmentContainer[3] which lets you render data from the store with React.
[0] https://facebook.github.io/relay/docs/en/runtime-architectur...
[1] https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/master/packages/relay...
[2] https://facebook.github.io/relay/docs/en/query-renderer.
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This is what worked [0] for me in the last couple of projects (and the current one):
- Backend: Django + Django Rest Framework + Postgres
- Frontend: React + Redux + React Router + webpack + million other small modules [1]. You may also look into Relay (esp. upcoming v2: https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/1369) and GraphQL, because it may simplify a lot of backend <-> frontend communication.
[0] as in: I am productive using these tools. Partially, because I already know the tooling and best practices.
[1] yes, there's a lot to learn about the tooling, but when you're just starting, you can use some boilerplate or Create React App tool.
In Ask HN: Which web stack should I learn for personal projects?Ask HN: Who is using Facebook's GraphQL in production?
I could only find this thread: https://github.com/facebook/relay/blob/master/USERS.md about companies using Relay, and none about GraphQL. I have a feeling that GraphQL adoption is substantial, but I have a hard time finding hard data to prove it.
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