What is Nexus?

Nexus is a GraphQL Backend-as-a-Service. This is a great way for you and your team to test if Nexus is right for your project! With Nexus, you can easily generate a GraphQL server that connects to all of your data sources and test queries quickly on your own AWS infrastructure. Nexus takes your data sources, whether it be a Postgres Database, GraphQL API Endpoint, REST API or all three. The GraphQL we create for you creates a unified schema, giving your frontend team a single endpoint to make queries to. You can test your queries in your local development environment and when you're ready, we can take care of deploying your graphql backend to your AWS infrastructure. Once your backend is deployed to AWS, you will receive an API Endpoint, with which you can give to your frontend team to quickly make queries to. Take a look at our case study to learn more about GraphQL and how we built Nexus.

The Team

:woman_technologist: Felicia Bacon Software Engineer College Station, Texas

:man_technologist: Benjamin Perrault Software Engineer Tulsa, Oklahoma

:woman_technologist: Kimberly Ramirez Software Engineer Colorado

:man_technologist: Matthew Malane Software Engineer Huntington Beach, California

:heavy_check_mark: Prerequisites

• Docker (Make sure Docker Daemon is running)
• AWS IAM Account
• AWS CLI installed and configured
• Node
• NPM

:desktop_computer: Commands

| Commands | Description | | ----------------- | ----------------------------------- | | nexus init | Creates and Configures your project | | nexus dev | Starts mesh server | | nexus dashboard | Starts dashboard | | nexus deploy | Deploys server to AWS | | nexus redeploy | Redeploys changes to AWS | | nexus destroy | Destroys AWS infrastructure |

:desktop_computer: Setup & Installation

1. npm install nexus-cli

• Installs the Nexus CLI NPM package

2. npm install -g .

• Globally Installs all Nexus commands

3. nexus --help

• Displays a list and descriptions of all Nexus commands

4. mkdir <project directory name> && cd <project directory name>

• Create a new empty directory where you will run your project

5. nexus init or nexus i

• Initializes your new project that contains a .meshrc.yaml configuration file. Nexus adds your data sources to this file to configure your GraphQL server.

:technologist: Development

Once you have created your project and added data sources, you can run your GraphQL server in your local environment. This is a quick way to test your queries and make sure things are working correctly before you deploy your server to your AWS infrastructure.

nexus add or nexus a

• Asks for your data source name
• You can 3 options: Postgres Database, GraphQL API Endpoint and REST API Endpoint
• Asks for your connection
• For Postgres, you will enter a connection string
• For GraphQL and REST, you will enter an endpoint

nexus dev or nexus d

• Spins up your local development GraphQL Server
• Opens a browser page at localhost with the port you specified in the command line
• From here, you can make queries to your data sources
• Any data sources that you add through nexus add will be reflected in the Explorer

nexus dashboard

• Spins up your project dashboard
• You can add, edit and remove data sources
• You have a few options when it comes to deploying to your AWS infrastructure:
  • If you have not deployed your server yet, you can click the deploy button
  • If you have already deployed your project, you can make changes to your data sources and then redeploy your project
• On the GraphiQL tab, you can view your local development environment. This GraphiQL looks similiar to the GraphiQL that appears in your browser at localhost when you run the command nexus dev
• When you make changes to your data sources, a new GraphiQL environment will generate after a few seconds. This will reflect all of your data source changes.

:rocket: Deployment

We automate the process of deploying your server to AWS to make things easier for you and your team. With one command, we provision AWS infrastructure for you on your account. Your server will run on an AWS EC2 instance that is provisioned through AWS Fargate and ECS.

nexus deploy

• Creates a Docker image that packages up your code
• specify steps user will take
• You are prompted to enter your AWS region
• etc.

:arrow_lower_left: Teardown

You can decide to teardown your AWS resources. This will not destroy your GraphQL server project.

nexus destroy

• Destroys your AWS ECS Fargate infrastructure