apollo-server/docs/source/essentials/running-a-server.md

title	description
ApolloServer	All of the things you need with no configuration needed!

Overview

Apollo Server provides an easy way for a brand new application to get up and running quickly by providing an integrated web-server with minimal configuration.

Running a dedicated GraphQL server is a great choice for many deployments, however, if you're looking to add Apollo Server functionality to an existing webserver, follow the Middleware installation instructions instead.

Prerequisites

• You have designed type definitions. (Type definitions)
• You have resolvers for your type definitions. (Resolvers)

If you don't meet or don't understand all of these prerequisites, we recommend you start at the Getting Started page for a more complete example. Alternatively, visit the links to the right of the prerequisites above to find out more information.

Installation

There are two packages which must be installed for Apollo Server to function:

• apollo-server: The actual Apollo Server package.
• graphql: The supporting GraphQL JavaScript library which is a peer dependency of apollo-server and shared amongst the various GraphQL-related components in your project. We won't use this package directly, but a single copy of it must be installed in the application.

To install, run:

npm install --save apollo-server graphql

Importing

Start by importing the ApolloServer class:

const { ApolloServer } = require('apollo-server');

Import your type definitions

For this example, we'll import type definitions and resolvers from a file called schema which lives alongside the main server code.

// Make sure you've created this file and defined type
// definitions along with their resolvers!
const { typeDefs, resolvers } = require('./schema');

Instantiating

Now, using the ApolloServer class, pass in the type definitions (typeDefs) and resolvers (resolvers), which were imported in the previous section, to the ApolloServer constructor:

const server = new ApolloServer({
  typeDefs,
  resolvers,
});

See the API Reference for additional options which can be passed to the ApolloServer constructor and instructions for creating the options based on the incoming request.

Listening for requests

Finally, when you're ready to start accepting connections, call the listen method on the instance of ApolloServer which was created in the previous step:

server.listen({ port: 3000 });

If the port is omitted, port 4000 will be used. For additional options available on the listen method, see the API reference.

Next steps

Once you have a GraphQL server up and running, there are a number of configurable options worth considering. Some great resources for additional information are:

• API documentation
• Schema design
• Schema directives
• Deploying

TODO

• Evans thinks this should go into advanced/as an anti pattern
  • best practice dictates that you should have your GraphQL server separate from other services and have a single endpoint
  • the advanced section could talk about this in the case that you are doing something special, such as SSR