3. Registering our schema

📝 Let's register our schema!

The first step of getting our app into production is registering our schema with Apollo.

Let's go to Apollo Studio in the browser. You'll need an Apollo account set up with an organization.

In previous courses, we've tested our locally running graph using Sandbox. This helped us easily prototype and iterate on our schema changes. To register a schema deployed in production, we need to create a deployed graph, which integrates with the schema registry. A deployed graph is visible to all members of your organization.

Graphs!

Sandbox is a

environment where we can explore and test a GraphQL schema. To register a

schema and track our changes over time, we can create a

in Apollo Studio, which is visible to

Drag items from this box to the blanks above

the whole organization
production
development
destructible graph
deployed graph
the whole world

📈 Creating a graph

Note: Depending on when you created your account and what plan you're on, your Studio account might look a bit different than what we're showing in the video or lesson instructions.

Before continuing with the lesson, expand the section below to find your specific steps on how to create a graph.

First things first, do you have an GraphOS account?

If you do have an account already and you're logged in to Studio, what do you see on the top right of the homepage's navigation bar?

If you chose 1A) and finished converting your account, what do you see on the Studio homepage?

Give it a title. Select Monolith as the graph architecture, then click Next.

https://studio.apollographql.com

Screenshot of the modal for creating a new graph with the correct inputs

From here, we have a few ways to register our schema, but we'll focus on the first option: Apollo Server. This method uses a protocol called schema reporting, where our GraphQL server automatically registers its latest schema every time it starts up! To enable this, we need to set up the three environment variables shown on the page:

APOLLO_KEY=service:xxxxx
APOLLO_GRAPH_REF=xxxxxx
APOLLO_SCHEMA_REPORTING=true

Note: We used to have separate variables for APOLLO_GRAPH_ID and APOLLO_GRAPH_VARIANT, but those have now been combined into a single environment variable: APOLLO_GRAPH_REF. (Under the hood, the structure of the graph reference variable is really <APOLLO_GRAPH_ID>@<APOLLO_GRAPH_VARIANT>.)

How does Apollo Server automatically register its schema in production?

Using the schema reporting protocolBy providing identifiers via environment variablesUsing introspection

We'll use these environment variables when we get our GraphQL server into production!

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