Our team at Marmelab helped Arte transition away from a complex GraphQL layer. Here's how Zod became our secret weapon for maintaining type safety while reducing architectural complexity.

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Marmelab helped Arte migrate from a complex GraphQL-based backend-for-frontend to a simpler REST API architecture using Zod for runtime type validation. The original GraphQL layer, implemented in 2017 to aggregate data across multiple platforms, had evolved into a REST API that internally used GraphQL.js, creating maintenance overhead and onboarding friction. By prototyping with the most complex endpoint first, the team discovered Zod could provide the same runtime type safety as GraphQL schemas while reducing architectural complexity. Key challenges included handling runtime validation, JSON serialization gotchas with undefined values, and filtering extra properties. Advanced patterns like using merge() instead of intersection() for discriminated unions proved essential. The migration reduced cognitive load while maintaining type safety, demonstrating that architectural decisions should evolve with project needs.

From GraphQL to Zod: Simplifying Arte's API Architecture

Solution Journey: Discovering Zod’s Power

Technical Implementation: Advanced Patterns

Broader Implications: Choosing the Right Tool

Funny, how they assume, everybody knows that “Arte”. Do they talk about the TV channel or what?

These are orthogonal technologies. I don’t get why they attach the validation library to the data fetching method. You could easily combine zod with graphql.