Query

Query is the GraphQL concept used to fetch data from the server. Think of it as a GET request in the REST API world, but remember - GraphQL requests are always POST calls. You can use a query to fetch a single field, multiple fields, apply filters, or get data conditionally.

As an example, here is a simple GraphQL query that would fetch company information:

query getCompanyName {
  company {
    companyName
    companyType
  }
}

With GraphQL, you specify the exact data fields your use case requires, no more and no less. In this basic query, we are simply going to fetch the companyName and companyType fields.

This is one of the main advantages of GraphQL. Not only is the response clean and specific for your use case, but it can often be more performant, as the Intuit API does not need to fetch and process fields that won’t even be used by the client (a term called “over-fetching”).

Feel free to play around with different queries. Many GraphQL IDEs have an autocomplete feature, to make forming queries easier!

Next, learn about modifying data with Mutations.