Now that we've gone over the basic concepts of GraphQL,

we're almost ready to run our first query.

But before we do, I'm gonna give you a tour of the environment we'll be using in

this course to run and test our queries.

It's called Launchpad, and if you're familiar with sandbox tools,

like JS pin or Code pin, you'll be right at home.

With Launchpad, we can run one off queries and see the results

without the overhead of setting up and deploying a full GraphQL server.

To get started, go to launchpad.graphql.com in your browser.

If you've never been here before, you'll be greeted with a welcome message

that briefly explains what Launchpad is used for, and

contains a link to the awesome Launchpad repo.

The awesome Launchpad repo is where the official Launchpad docs are hosted.

If we go ahead and follow that link, we can find a ton of great resources such

as Launchpad starter projects and real world examples for GraphQL.

Now let's head back to our Launchpad tab.

There are three basic parts to Launchpad UI.

The backend editor, the query editor, and the response preview.

The backend editor contains the code responsible for

receiving the GraphicQL in building a response.

In this course, we'll be using pre-built Launchpad templates, so

you won't need to make any changes in this pane.

However, this pane will contain the schema for each lesson.

We'll use the schema to identify which fields are queryable for

a given end point.

The query editor is where we'll spending most of our time.

This is the interface we'll use for writing queries and

specifying the fields we want returned in our response.

As you might have guessed, the response preview

is where we can see the response that is returned by the backend.

If a query is unsuccessful, this is also where we'll see errors.