I am trying to figure out a clean way to work with queries and mongdb projections so I don't have to retrieve excessive information from the database.
So assuming I have:
// the query
type Query {
getUserByEmail(email: String!): User
}
And I have a User
with an email
and a username
, to keep things simple. If I send a query and I only want to retrieve the email, I can do the following:
query { getUserByEmail(email: "test@test.com") { email } }
But in the resolver, my DB query still retrieves both username
and email
, but only one of those is passed back by apollo server as the query result.
I only want the DB to retrieve what the query asks for:
// the resolver
getUserByEmail(root, args, context, info) {
// check what fields the query requested
// create a projection to only request those fields
return db.collection('users').findOne({ email: args.email }, { /* projection */ });
}
Of course the problem is, getting information on what the client is requesting isn't so straightforward.
Assuming I pass in request as context - I considered using context.payload
(hapi.js), which has the query string, and searching it through various .split()
s, but that feels kind of dirty. As far as I can tell, info.fieldASTs[0].selectionSet.selections
has the list of fields, and I could check for it's existence in there. I'm not sure how reliable this is. Especially when I start using more complex queries.
Is there a simpler way?
In case you don't use mongDB, a projection is an additional argument you pass in telling it explicitly what to retrieve:
// telling mongoDB to not retrieve _id
db.collection('users').findOne({ email: 'test@test.com' }, { _id: 0 })
As always, thanks to the amazing community.
Sure you can. This is actually the same functionality that is implemented on join-monster package for SQL based db's. There's a talk by their creator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7AdMIuXOgs
Take a look on their info
analysing code to get you started - https://github.com/stems/join-monster/blob/master/src/queryASTToSqlAST.js#L6-L30
Would love to see a projection-monster package for us mongo users :)
UPDATE:
There is a package that creates a projection object from info
on npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/graphql-mongodb-projection
Use graphql-fields
Apollo server example
const rootSchema = [`
type Person {
id: String!
name: String!
email: String!
picture: String!
type: Int!
status: Int!
createdAt: Float
updatedAt: Float
}
schema {
query: Query
mutation: Mutation
}
`];
const rootResolvers = {
Query: {
users(root, args, context, info) {
const topLevelFields = Object.keys(graphqlFields(info));
return fetch(`/api/user?fields=${topLevelFields.join(',')}`);
}
}
};
const schema = [...rootSchema];
const resolvers = Object.assign({}, rootResolvers);
// Create schema
const executableSchema = makeExecutableSchema({
typeDefs: schema,
resolvers,
});
2020-Jan answer
The current answer to getting the fields requested in a GraphQL query, is to use the graphql-parse-resolve-info
library for parsing the info
parameter.
The library is "a pretty complete solution and is actually used under the hood by postgraphile", and is recommended going forward by the author of the other top library for parsing the info
field, graphql-fields
.
You can generate MongoDB projection from info
argument. Here is the sample code that you can follow
/**
* @description - Gets MongoDB projection from graphql query
*
* @return { object }
* @param { object } info
* @param { model } model - MongoDB model for referencing
*/
function getDBProjection(info, model) {
const {
schema: { obj }
} = model;
const keys = Object.keys(obj);
const projection = {};
const { selections } = info.fieldNodes[0].selectionSet;
for (let i = 0; i < keys.length; i++) {
const key = keys[i];
const isSelected = selections.some(
selection => selection.name.value === key
);
projection[key] = isSelected;
}
console.log(projection);
}
module.exports = getDBProjection;