Microsoft is shipping version 4.0 of its Graph Toolkit, a set of components for working with the Microsoft Graph. The update brings the search components to general availability, enhances the developer experience, and fixes bugs.
Microsoft Graph is a set of APIs for accessing data and intelligence in the Microsoft 365 business software platform.
Unveiled February 8, Microsoft Graph Toolkit 4.0 allows users to edit To Do items directly in components and see colleagues’ presence and cards when using the people picker. After six months in preview, search components have been promoted to general availability, with full support. And the 4.0 release includes dozens of bug fixes (see release notes).
Microsoft Graph Toolkit originally was introduced in September 2019, featuring a collection of reusable, framework-agnostic web UI components to work with Microsoft Graph. To update an application to the newest version of Microsoft Graph Toolkit, navigate to your project directory and run:
npm i @microsoft/mgt
Graph Toolkit 4.0, the developer experience has been improved, with an effort to focus on performance and consumer bundle size. The underlying Lit framework has been updated to take advantage of asynchronous rendering. This enables components to be more aware of their state and re-render less often and leave more memory and cycles for the rest of the page.
Bundle sizes have been reduced via an explicit registration of components being used, so that unused components are no longer included. This is expected to improve the experience for both developers and users.
Other improvements to the developer experience in Graph Toolkit 4.0:
- Attributes have been converted to use string unions instead of Enums, allowing for simpler coding and better documentation.
- The need for Microsoft Graph’s specific SPFx package has been removed, simplifying the experience for SharePoint developers.
- The mgt-loader has been removed to simplify the onboarding experience and offer a single way to consume the toolkit.
- The playground now includes an optional log-in that allows users to test the toolkit with their own data.