Rationale about graphql-shield

[maticzav]

Hey @Offirmo 👋

Great question! The purpose of graphql-shield is to ease the development of permission layer in your GraphQL server. As you've mentioned, it might as well be interpreted as some kind of a firewall. GraphQL Shield is particularly useful when permitting ceratin functionality to authenticated users only for example. I recommend you take a look at the examples in the examples folder.

https://github.com/maticzav/graphql-shield/tree/master/examples

The idea behind GraphQL Shield is the abstraction of permission layer and ease of reuse of your permission queries. All of the functionality can be achieved without using GraphQL Shield, but I found myself repeating over and over again when doing it manually - that's why I created graphql-shield.

So, to answer your question, graphql-shield protects your server from unwanted access. Thanks for pointing out the lack of understanding, I will try to find a better description. I hope I answered your question, but feel free to ask some more 🙂

[picosam]

Hello @maticzav -- may I add that graphql-shield serves Authorization requirements of a GraphQL server (vs. Authentication)?

[Offirmo]

Great! Just add this to the README now ;)

[maticzav]

@Offirmo I just updated README.
@picosam thanks for pointing this out 🙂