How ProPublica Illinois built The Ticket Trap

ProPublica Illinois, an independent nonprofit newsroom, built The Ticket Trap using the JAMstack with Hasura. This interactive database allows users to search through parking ticket records issued in Chicago since 1996. Developed by David Eads, a news applications developer at ProPublica Illinois, The Ticket Trap was created to provide deeper insight into their stories. By using PostgreSQL and querying with GraphQL, the development process was significantly simplified, allowing for more time spent on other aspects of development like design and frontend performance. The JAMstack architecture also reduced maintenance efforts once the app had been deployed. Released just before Christmas 2018, The Ticket Trap turned out to be one of the top 5 projects in terms of traffic for ProPublica Illinois that year.