Hosted Docs vs. GraphQL API Explorer

* This is an automated transcript. Please excuse innacuracies.

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Okay so in this video, we are going to talk a little bit about how documentation works in relation to 8base and specifically go over the two types of documentation we have. One is the hosted docs at Docs.8base.com where you're going to find a lot of information about different platform knowledge that you might want. And the other is the API Explorer, which is where you can find the Documentation Explorer which is a great way to really get insightful about your different types of tables and kind of how all the graph QL stuff works on 8base.  

So, let's jump in and take a look.  

Okay so first off right now I am on docks of a piece comm which is where our hosted docs are. Really this is a great resource to find out or figure out any platform knowledge; as well as things like how to deploy service functions or do roles and authorization or anytime permissioning; essentially like I said, any platform knowledge or how to develop with 8base information is here. That said we are constantly trying to improve our documentation and it's often perfect. So, if you see anything that you think could be better explained or you think something's missing please shoot over to Contribute which is our github page for our github repo for the documentation it's open source. So, if you want to start contributing to this we would be absolutely thrilled. However, if you just want to create an issue on something that isn't working or something that you think would be better explained, feel free to do that and we will get to it as soon as we can and make sure that gets updated and clarified for you.  

Alright so, the second type of documentation I want to go over is the Documentation Explorer and this is a really cool feature and I'm something that I personally find extremely valuable. As you might already know, one thing that a piece does is it auto generates and manages a number of different graph QL schemas for you based on the data tables that you create an 8base; essentially any type of crud action that you'd want to do or perform; create; read update or delete, is something that we handle and manage for you so it makes development superfast- at the same time though of course is fully extensible, so you can create your own or go far beyond that for any type of spec that you want to implement. For example, in this in this workspace that I have a table called “Brokers”.  

So, an example of a type of query that 8base managers for me is a Broker's list. So, in this example you can see that I kind of had a little query down here that says, “Well if a brokers nickname equals Steve I want his ID and nickname.” If I run that, it's right there. However, let's say that I didn't know what that query looked like or the arguments that would pass to it. I could go right over here the Documentation Explorer click on “query”, look up broker, I can see the broker here and the brokers list, click on the brokers list and here's all the different types of arguments right in the documentation on how to use them. So, for example, I could filter, I could order, I could sort skip, before-and-after, different types for pagination; it's all right here explained to me all the different types that I can use in it. And so really quick and effective way right in the workspace to figure out how to use the API Explorer and build some really powerful queries, mutations or subscriptions.  

One important thing to mention on this as well is, it's a great way for your team to keep up with information or documentation about the different things you're building. What I mean by that? So, if I were to jump over to my data builder and I was on the Broker's table here click on nickname and you can see that there was this nickname filled in the description was, “this is the brokers actual name”. Well that's not a necessarily a true nickname. So, I'm just going to change the description to, “This is the Broker’s nickname.” I'm going to save that. Then as soon as I jump back into the API Explorer. I go to query I go to a broker and I open the broker and I look at the type, I can see that here the nickname has the new and updated description. So, like I say that's just a kind of a simple you know funny example; however, that goes for tables that goes for argument types. And so, really while you're building especially on teams, you can keep the most relevant and up to date information right here in the management console on the data table users that you're working with or their fields and make sure that everyone always has the most up-to-date and relevant information.  

That's it, I hope that you found this video valuable. If you want to subscribe to future updates please subscribe to the channel and looking forward to seeing you in one of the next videos take care.