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Update: On April 16th 2021, Slash GraphQL was officially renamed Dgraph Cloud. All other information below still applies.
In October 2020, Dgraph put out a call to all GraphQL, coding, and UX/UI enthusiasts. Our Hack & Slash Hackathon gave developers from around the world a chance to build web apps, plugins, bots, and more. To help innovation and creativity run free, Slash GraphQL lets users create apps without the need for backend management.
Of course, there were prizes, too. 1st place took home $3000, with 2nd and 3rd place getting $2000 and $1000 respectively. Students with top submissions could also land an internship opportunity with Dgraph Labs.
Over 180 ideas were submitted for the Hackathon, with 42 getting shortlisted. In the end, Dgraph received 18 submitted prototypes. There were some creative and innovative ideas, which made the judging process difficult for the panel of judges at Dgraph.
Looking for inspiration for your next GraphQL project? These winning ideas could give you a push in a fun, new direction.
#3 - Automatic Timetable Generator is a tool for students, building their schedule each term. Students can select courses with multiple available times and the timetable generator will build conflict-free options.
#2 - Graphy - Turn your workflows into amazing forms and surveys. Graphy is a drag and drop survey tool that lets you build better feedback flows.
Winner - Complete Shakespeare: Shakespeare Alexa Skill powered by Slash GraphQL is a graph database of every chapter, play, and paragraph ever written by Shakespeare. It sources data from, and is the spiritual successor to, the Open Source Shakespeare project. An Alexa skill consumes this data, letting you query Shakespeare in natural language. You can ask questions like “Who is Lady Macbeth?” or “Which Shakespeare plays have Henry in them?”
We invite you to check out the projects in more detail to dive into the code and how it all works. But we wanted to know how the Hackathon went. Shardul Aeer, our winner answered our questions:
How did you hear about the Hackathon?
Learned about Dgraph from Hacker News. It’s been Google and FB ads after that.
What made you excited to take part?
Was looking to evaluate Dgraph for a while, the hackathon provided an occasion for that. Writing DB schemas and resolvers was a pain point when using GraphQL, Dgraph solved this problem beautifully.
Where did you get the idea for the project?
From the Star Wars API used by graphql.org. I used Alexa because it’s simple to work on- no CSS or JS frameworks to juggle around.
What are you going to do with the prize?
It’s bootstrap capital for an ongoing venture.
How long did the project take?
About 1.5 weeks to complete - most of that time was spent cleaning the data. Integrating with Alexa only took a couple of days.
Don’t miss our next Hackathon or other exciting events. Be sure to join the Dgraph community, and sign up for our newsletter. What prize-winning ideas will you submit?
