Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GraphQL Playground VS Blocks.js

Compare GraphQL Playground VS Blocks.js and see what are their differences

GraphQL Playground logo GraphQL Playground

GraphQL IDE for better development workflows

Blocks.js logo Blocks.js

Deprecated repository. Contribute to Tixit/blocks.js development by creating an account on GitHub.
  • GraphQL Playground Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09
  • Blocks.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

GraphQL Playground features and specs

  • Interactive Interface
    GraphQL Playground provides a user-friendly, interactive interface for exploring and testing GraphQL queries and mutations. This allows developers to quickly experiment with their GraphQL API.
  • Auto-Completion and Syntax Highlighting
    It offers auto-completion and syntax highlighting which increases productivity by helping developers write correct GraphQL queries faster.
  • Built-in Documentation
    The built-in documentation explorer helps developers easily navigate and understand the GraphQL schemas, types, and fields available in their API.
  • Real-time Error Feedback
    Provides real-time error feedback, making it easier to identify and fix issues while writing queries, resulting in smoother development workflows.
  • Request History
    GraphQL Playground maintains a history of queries and mutations executed, allowing developers to quickly revisit and reuse previous work.
  • Customizable Settings
    It is highly customizable, allowing developers to set endpoint URLs, headers, and other configurations to match various environments (development, staging, production).

Possible disadvantages of GraphQL Playground

  • Performance
    GraphQL Playground can be resource-intensive, consuming significant amounts of memory and CPU, which might slow down the development environment, especially with large schemas.
  • Security Concerns
    As an interactive playground embedded in web interfaces, it may expose sensitive data or operations if not properly secured, necessitating careful configuration and access control.
  • Limited Offline Use
    Since it relies on an active endpoint to fetch schema details and execute queries, its utility is limited when working offline.
  • Deprecated Maintenance
    As of 2020, the GraphQL Playground repository is not actively maintained anymore, which means it may not receive updates, bug fixes, or new features.
  • Complex Configuration
    In comparison to simpler alternatives, setting up and configuring GraphQL Playground can be more complex and time-consuming.

Blocks.js features and specs

  • Modular Design
    Blocks.js allows for modular design construction with reusable and composable components, which enhances maintainability and scalability of projects.
  • Ease of Use
    The library is designed to be easy to use with a minimalistic approach, making it accessible for developers who want to build and manage DOM elements with less boilerplate.
  • Flexibility
    Blocks.js offers flexibility in building and managing UI components, enabling developers to create highly customized web interfaces without being restricted by typical framework constraints.
  • Efficient Component Updates
    It provides efficient ways to update the DOM, improving performance especially for applications that require frequent updates or changes to the UI.

Possible disadvantages of Blocks.js

  • Limited Popularity and Community Support
    Blocks.js is not as widely used as other UI libraries or frameworks, which might limit community support and resources available for troubleshooting or learning.
  • Lack of Comprehensive Documentation
    The library might not have exhaustive documentation, which can be a barrier for new users trying to learn and implement it properly.
  • Features Compared to Established Frameworks
    Compared to established frameworks like React or Angular, Blocks.js may lack some advanced features or optimizations, which could be crucial for certain complex applications.
  • Potential Integration Challenges
    Integrating Blocks.js with other libraries or existing projects might present challenges, especially if those projects are built with frameworks that have differing paradigms.

Analysis of GraphQL Playground

Overall verdict

  • Yes, GraphQL Playground is considered a good tool, especially for its user-friendly features and robust functionality. It significantly enhances the API development experience, particularly when dealing with GraphQL.

Why this product is good

  • GraphQL Playground is a popular tool for testing and exploring GraphQL APIs. It offers an intuitive interface, enabling developers to write GraphQL queries, inspect responses, and debug their GraphQL operations with ease. The tool supports multiple environments and provides features like query history, documentation exploration, and real-time subscriptions, making it a versatile choice for both beginner and advanced users.

Recommended for

    GraphQL Playground is recommended for developers and software engineers who are working with GraphQL APIs. It is particularly useful for those who need to test and debug APIs, create and manage queries efficiently, or just learn more about how a GraphQL API works. It's suitable for both individual developers and teams looking to streamline their API development workflows.

GraphQL Playground videos

Graphql playground review completa parte 1

More videos:

  • Review - Create Local GraphQL Playground
  • Review - Graphql playground review completa parte 2

Blocks.js videos

No Blocks.js videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GraphQL Playground and Blocks.js)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
GraphQL
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript Framework
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GraphQL Playground seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 12 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GraphQL Playground mentions (12)

  • Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs"
    Have you tried something like GraphQL playground before? https://github.com/graphql/graphql-playground There's other tools out there that can generate similar docs or playgrounds, given you have a schema/spec of some type. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Exploring GraphiQL 2 Updates and New Features
    GraphiQL is a tool that was created to help developers explore GraphQL APIs, maintained by the GraphQL Foundation. But when GraphiQL became more and more popular, developers started to create additional GraphQL IDEs. A good example of this was GraphQL Playground, which quickly became the most popular GraphQL IDE. It was loosely based on GraphiQL, but had more features and a better UI. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Why Is It So Important To Go To Meetups
    I went to a GraphQL meetup and they used the gql playground and a similar schema generator to what I was using, and it made me feel relevant. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • GraphQL subscriptions at scale with NATS
    Here, we'll create a simple GraphQL server and subscribe to a subject from our resolver. We'll use GraphQL playground to mock client side behavior. Once we're connected we'll use NATS CLI to send a payload to our subject and see the changes on the client. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • GraphQL vs REST in .NET Core
    Now we can consume created GraphQL API. In the GitHub Repo same functionality has been added with REST approach and GraphQL endpoint. Also widely used Swagger configured for Web API Endpoints as well as AltairUI added for GraphQL endpoint testing. Naturally, AltairUI it not a must for GraphQL, you can also use Swagger, GraphiQL, or GraphQL Playground. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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Blocks.js mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Blocks.js yet. Tracking of Blocks.js recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GraphQL Playground and Blocks.js, you can also consider the following products

How to GraphQL - Open-source tutorial website to learn GraphQL development

Deku - Functional view library for building UI components as an alternative to React

Stellate.co - Everything you need to run your GraphQL API at scale

Preact.js - Preact is a fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API. Components & Virtual DOM.

GraphQl Editor - Editor for GraphQL that lets you draw GraphQL schemas using visual nodes

w2ui - W2UI is a small JavaScript UI library with a complete set of widgets: layout, grid, sidebar, toolbar, tabs, fields, popup, utilities.