Lighthouse

What Lighthouse is

Lighthouse is a free framework for serving GraphQL from an existing Laravel application. It describes data with GraphQL Schema Definition Language and adds behavior through server-side directives, while reusing Laravel concepts and Eloquent models. Built-in directives support record creation, relationships, query constraints, pagination, and validation of fields and arguments. Developers can write custom directives for reusable behavior, and the @can directive family can apply Laravel Policies to limit field operations. The default GraphQL endpoint is `/graphql`, and clients can use it. Lighthouse supports Laravel authentication mechanisms, including Sanctum, and subscriptions for clients to observe events and receive server updates. Parsed queries can be cached with Laravel cache stores or local PHP files with OPcache. Automatic Persisted Queries are supported with Apollo compatibility and are enabled by default when query caching is enabled. Install it in a Laravel or Lumen project using Composer. It is self-hosted, and GraphQL tooling such as GraphiQL is not included. Federation support is experimental and cannot serve as a federation gateway.