GraphQL is most commonly served over HTTP. However, despite GraphQL being well specified, this HTTP transport is not. To correct for this, the GraphQL working group has been working on the GraphQL over HTTP specification.

Alongside a specification, we prefer a true implementation to have as a reference. This ensures the ideas we specify can be implemented well, and that as edge-cases arise in software we can ensure their solutions are reflected in the specification as well.

For GraphQL over HTTP, this has nominally been express-graphql. This package makes it easy to create a GraphQL serving endpoint from an express server. However, as the Node community has grown over the years, alternatives to express have emerged and there is no longer one framework to align to. Also, as our maintenance bandwidth has focused on other projects, express-graphql has fallen behind.

Luckily, thanks to the focused efforts of Denis Badurina, we have an alternative in graphql-http. Denis has been part of the committee working on the GraphQL over HTTP specification, and sought to build a dependency-free compliant GraphQL server that works with most all existing Node.js and Deno HTTP frameworks.

The decision was made to adopt the graphql-http project into the GraphQL Foundation (with Denis continuing as the lead maintainer), as well as to make it the official reference implementation of GraphQL over HTTP.

We will be deprecating express-graphql as part of this change, and recommending those using it migrate to graphql-http.