Passing complex arguments to GraphQL mutations

Question

I've been using GraphQL in a Node server using graphql-js, and GraphQL has shown to be an extremely valuable abstraction, but I'm running into an issue.

I often find myself needing to pass large structured objects as arguments to GraphQL mutations, using GraphQLInputObjectType. This would be fine, but GraphQL doesn't support the use of JSON notation :(. So I end up just sending a string containing the JSON, for the server to deal with.

const objectStr = JSON.stringify(object).replace(new RegExp("\"", "g"), "'")

graphQLClient(`{
    user: updateUser(someDataObject: "${objectStr}") {...}
}`)

But now I'm not benefiting at all from GraphQL!

I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong here. What is the GraphQL way of sending, say, signup form data, to a mutation?

Malfeasance

Answer 1

The best way of doing this is to use input objects.

Essentially your request would look like:

/* Query */
mutation Update($input: UpdateUserInput!) {
    updateUser(input: $input) {
        changedUser {
            id
            username
        }
    }
}

/* Variables (as JSON) */
{
    "input": {
        "username": "[email protected]",
        "password": "SuperSecretPassword"
    }
}

You would pass that into the content body of the payload in your POST request as this:

{
    "query": <GraphQL query from above as a string>,
    "variables": <JSON object from above>
}

If you want a deeper explanation, you can check out Scaphold's Docs for updating data to help you structure your API.

Hope this helps!

Miru

Missing part of this solution is where and how do you define UpdateUserInput. – Unschooled

the website is down, so the documentation can be found here github.com/scaphold-io/scaphold-docs/blob/master/docs/coredata/… – Anna