---
layout: page
title: Quickstart Guide
active_tab: quickstart
description: A Quick guide to Graphene
---

Graphene is a powerful framework for creating GraphQL schemas easily in Python.

## Requirements

- Python (2.6.5+, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, pypy)
- Graphene (0.1+)

The following packages are optional:

- Django (1.6+)


## Project setup

```bash
# Create the project directory
mkdir tutorial
cd tutorial

# Create a virtualenv to isolate our package dependencies locally
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate  # On Windows use `env\Scripts\activate`

pip install graphene
```

## Types

First we're going to define some GraphQL ObjectTypes and relay Nodes for our `Schema`:


```python
import graphene
from graphene import relay

USER_DATA = [
    {
        'user_id': '1',
        'first_name': 'Peter',
        'last_name': 'Cabbage',
        'email_address': 'peter@cabbage.com',
        'age': 32
    },
    {
        'user_id': '2',
        'first_name': 'Lukas',
        'last_name': 'Chard',
        'email_address': 'lukas@broccoli.com',
        'age': 54
    },
    {
        'user_id': '3',
        'first_name': 'Marie',
        'last_name': 'Cauliflower',
        'email_address': 'marie@cauliflower.com',
        'age': 27
    },
]

def fetch_user_from_database(user_id):
    user, = [user for user in USER_DATA if user['user_id'] == user_id]
    return user

def fetch_users_from_database(args):
    full_name = args.get('fullName', None)
    if full_name:
        full_name = full_name.upper()
    sort_key = args.get('sortKey', None)
    sort_direction = args.get('sortDirection', None)
    reversed = False
    if sort_direction and sort_direction == 'DESC':
        reversed = True

    filtered_users = [user for user in USER_DATA if full_name is None or full_name in
    user['first_name'].upper() + ' ' + user['last_name'].upper()]
    if sort_key and sort_direction:
        filtered_users.sort(lambda item: item[sort_key], reverse=reversed)

    return filtered_users

schema = graphene.Schema()

class User(relay.Node):
    """A User fetched from the database"""
    user_id = graphene.ID()
    first_name = graphene.String()
    last_name = graphene.String()
    full_name = graphene.String(description='A field created by setting the first and last name.')
    email_address = graphene.String()
    age = graphene.Int()

    @classmethod
    def get_node(cls, user_id, info):
        user_dict = fetch_user_from_database(user_id)
        # user_dict will contain the fields, user_id, first_name, last_name, email_address and age
        user_dict['id'] = user_dict['user_id'] # will be used to set the global ID used by relay
        return User(**user_dict)

    def resolve_full_name(self, *args):
        return ' '.join([self.first_name, self.last_name])

def _user_container(user):
    # user_dict will contain the fields, user_id, first_name, last_name, email_address and age
    user['id'] = user['user_id']
    return User(**user)

# This will be our root query
class Query(graphene.ObjectType):
        users = graphene.List(User,
                            fullName=graphene.String(),
                            sortKey=graphene.String(),
                            sortDirection=graphene.String())
        user = relay.NodeField(User)
        viewer = graphene.Field('self') # needed for Relay
        
        # args will be a dict with 'fullName', 'sortKey' and 'sortDirection'
        # info is an object with information about the query being sent
        def resolve_users(self, args, info):
            list_of_user_dicts = fetch_users_from_database(args)
            return [_user_container(user) for user in list_of_user_dicts]

        def resolve_viewer(self, *args, **kwargs):
            return self

# Here we set the root query for our schema
schema.query = Query
```

Then, we can start querying our schema:

```python
result = schema.execute('query { users { fullName } }')

# result.data should be {'users': [{fullName: 'Peter Cabbage'}, {fullName: 'Lukas Chart'}, {fullName: 'Marie Cauliflower'}]}
users = result.data['users']

print(users)
```

Congrats! You got your first version of graphene working!

**This Quickstart page needs to be improved, meanwhile visit the [schema](https://github.com/graphql-python/django-graphene-example/blob/master/starwars/schema.py) of our Starwars Django example!**