curl -X GET 'HOST_NAME:9000/requesttoken?secret=SECRET&lifetime=1000000'

For the fields HOST_NAME and SECRET, you must fill them out based on your TigerGraph Cloud Instance URL as well as the secret you copied. Here is an example for a given url and secret below:

url = https://blank-test.i.tgcloud.io:14240/#/home
secret = blank1231

curl -X GET https://blank-test.i.tgcloud.io:9000/requesttoken?secret=blank1231&lifetime=1000000

Method

Although there exist many different methods of calling the query endpoints, I believe that having a server in between which takes in the requests from the Front End and then calls to TigerGraph would be a good option, since the tokens are at one secure place, the server, and there is a chance to cache certain requests or computations which remain fairly constant. We will dive a bit deeper on the idea of caching in the next part of the Full Stack TigerGraph series.

Although there are many ways one can create this middle server, we shall use NodeJS and Express for this article. So, in the end, here is how our Request flow looks like.

Execution

I will assume that you have npm installed and working. First, let’s begin by creating a new NodeJS project.

npm init

Npm will now prompt you fill out your package.json information, please do so. Now, we will install express.

npm install express --save

If the install went smoothly, express will show as a dependency in your package.json.

Let’s create a file that corresponds to main key in your package.json, which would be index.js for me.

In index.js, let’s start by creating an express app and making it listen on port 5000 locally.

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
console.log("Listening...");
app.listen(5000);

At anytime you can run the app by using the following command:

node FILE
node index.js (For my project)

Now that the app is listening, let’s start by creating a GET endpoint where we will make a request to TigerGraph.

app.get("/profile/:id", async(req, res)=>{
});

To give a bit of context, suppose in our graph we have a query called getProfile which takes a parameter person and returns data about the profile based on that id. We want to be able to make a request to the getProfile endpoint and pass in the id parameter we receive from the request the client makes to our express server.

The graph schema, parameters and what not do not matter. This is just for an example.

To put it simply, from our route “/profile/:id” we must grab the id from the route parameters and use the id for the parameter person to the getProfile endpoint. Let’s start coding away!

First, let’s make a config file for our TigerGraph credentials. Simply make a file called config.js, and then place the credentials in the file. This is how I did it:

const TigerGraphCred = {
   token: "TOKEN",
   secret: "blank1231",
   queryUrl: "https://https://blank-test.i.tgcloud.io:9000/query/"
}

module.exports = TigerGraphCred;

Here is what my folder structure looks like:

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const TigerGraphCred = require("./config.js");
const fetch = require("node-fetch");

app.get("/profile/:id", async(req, res)=>{
const person = req.params.id;
const reqUrl = TigerGraphCred.queryUrl + `RP_getProfile?person=${person}`;
const response = await fetch(reqUrl, {
headers:{
"Content-Type": "application/json",
"Authorization": `Bearer ${TigerGraphCred.token}`,
"Accept":"application/json"
}
});

if(response.status === 200){
const json = await response.json();
//query for the error and send appropriate status code and response
if(json.error){
res.status(400).send({"error": json.message});
}
else{
res.status(200).send(json);
}
}
else{
const message = await response.text();
res.status(500).send({'error': message});
}
});

app.listen(5000);

Conclusion

A huge thank you for reading this article. This is the first of a series of articles that will navigate through building a Full Stack application with TigerGraph. Please let me know if you liked or disliked some part of the article and how I can improve.