Before beginning our journey with full stack GraphQL, we will take a look at the technologies we will be using and introduce the powerful concept of thinking in graphs. This section of the book focuses on the backend of our full stack application, specifically the database and GraphQL API.
In chapter 1, we introduce the components of a full stack GraphQL application and take a look at the specific technologies we will use throughout the book: GraphQL, React, Apollo, and Neo4j Database. In chapter 2, we dive head first into GraphQL and the basics of building a GraphQL API application. In chapter 3, we explore the Neo4j graph database, the property graph data model, and the Cypher query language. Then, in chapter 4, we show how to leverage database integrations for GraphQL and, specifically, the Neo4j GraphQL library to build GraphQL APIs backed by a graph database. After completing this first part of the book, we will have our database and initial GraphQL API application up and running and will be ready to start building the frontend in part 2.