What is the difference betweeen: aws-sdk/clients/appsync and aws-appsync?

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Can anyone please tell me what is the difference between:

aws-sdk/clients/appsync, and aws-appsync

According to the doc, aws-sdk/clients/appsync is used because just including aws-sdk is too large when we just need appsync, we use aws-sdk/clients/appsync.

However, aws-appsync seems also doing the same thing. When I create a client using aws-sdk/clients/appsync, there is no hydrated() function while aws-appsync has.

So

  • Why can't we simplify everything by just using aws-sdk/clients/<any_aws_package> and break everything that did not use it?
  • What is the point of separating something that is similar?

Thank you very much in advance for all your help.

aws-appsync
1 Answers

difference between: aws-sdk/clients/appsync, and aws-appsync

GraphQL originated at Facebook and the React/React Native apps used react-apollo to talk to the GraphQL based APIs.

AWS AppSync is the AWS offering for GraphQL. aws-sdk/clients/appsync is the JS SDK to invoke various AppSync management/control APIs (like create GraphQL API, create data source etc). Not sure if they also provided apis to consume the GraphQL based api.

aws-appsync is the way to consume AppSync backed GraphQL APIs. It plays well with react-apollo which is now moved to apollo-client.

There is another high level JS library from AWS Amplify, which is used to consume AppSync backed GraphQL APIs.

aws-sdk/clients/appsync is used because just including aws-sdk is too large

The initial release of the aws-sdk (Github repo here) contained the clients for all the AWS services and more. You need to install aws-sdk and you can talk to pretty much all the AWS services by initialising the clients for them. Obvisously it was not so good in terms of packaging JS bundles, the library was also not very modular.

Now the latest version V3 (rewritten using TypeScript) which is GA now, moves the clients to individual npm packages i.e. you need to only install the client you need e.g. npm i @aws-sdk/client-appsync instead of npm i aws-sdk. Learn more about it here. If you are getting started use the V3 packages.

Why can't we simplify everything by just using aws-sdk/clients/<any_aws_package> and break everything that did not use it?

It is the case with the V3 JS SDK.

What is the point of separating something that is similar?

They are not similar. One is used to consume the GraphQL based APIs (provided by AppSync) and the other is to manage AppSync itself. The V3 packages follow this very strictly while the earlier versions may have some utility code/ high level abstractions along with the core AWS apis.

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