Primary Photo for Laurin Quast

From Private To Public: Evolving a GraphQL API for the Outside World

Presentation byLaurin Quast

Turning a private GraphQL API into a public one comes with unexpected challenges. We’ll share how we approached this transition—starting from an existing internal schema that wasn’t shaped for external consumers—and the steps we took to expose only what was ready. Using Apollo Federation Contracts, we filtered out unstable or sensitive parts of the graph. Along the way, we defined best practices for the public schema, like cursor-based pagination, using oneOf for inputs and results. We’ll also touch on how we serve the schema through Hive Gateway with a supergraph setup, and the security measures we added, like depth limiting and complexity analysis. To keep things evolving safely, we rely on GraphQL Hive to track usage and guide deprecations.

If you’re thinking about exposing a GraphQL API—or just want ideas for keeping one clean and manageable—this talk will share what worked for us, what didn’t, and what we learned.

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Cover Photo for Improving the GraphQL developer experience on LEGO.com

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Primary Photo for Laurin Quast

From Private To Public: Evolving a GraphQL API for the Outside World

Presentation byLaurin Quast

Turning a private GraphQL API into a public one comes with unexpected challenges. We’ll share how we approached this transition—starting from an existing internal schema that wasn’t shaped for external consumers—and the steps we took to expose only what was ready. Using Apollo Federation Contracts, we filtered out unstable or sensitive parts of the graph. Along the way, we defined best practices for the public schema, like cursor-based pagination, using oneOf for inputs and results. We’ll also touch on how we serve the schema through Hive Gateway with a supergraph setup, and the security measures we added, like depth limiting and complexity analysis. To keep things evolving safely, we rely on GraphQL Hive to track usage and guide deprecations.

If you’re thinking about exposing a GraphQL API—or just want ideas for keeping one clean and manageable—this talk will share what worked for us, what didn’t, and what we learned.

Similar Presentations
Cover Photo for Improving the GraphQL developer experience on LEGO.com

Improving the GraphQL developer experience on LEGO.com

At LEGO.com, we have made great strides in stabilizing development cycles in our GraphQL gateway. We'll discuss the issues we used to have, how we used community tools to fix them, and where we're looking to go from here.

Primary Photo for Miles BardonMiles Bardon

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