GraphQL Tools - next generation schema stitching and new leadership

We are happy to announce the new GraphQL Tools v6 together with the new documentation website.

As the Guild, we recently took over the popular GraphQL Tools repository from the team at Apollo, who created this amazing library. We released v5 as a temporary stopgap release with a lot of bug-fixes around schema stitching and are now proud to reintroduce graphql-tools to the community with v6.

During that process we’ve reviewed and fixed hundreds of issues and pull requests and reduced the number of issues to a few that are being reviewed and processed speedily.

The low number of issues is despite the fact that the package is widely used with quick issue triage and turnaround — a new standard for open source maintenance that we apply to all of our open source tools.

The original GraphQL Tools enabled users to:

• build “SDL-first“ GraphQL schemas by attaching resolvers (and the other non-SDL GraphQL entities) to type definitions written in graphql schema definition language.
• modify schemas simply by annotating them with reusable schema directives
• create and transform “remote“ GraphQL schemas , i.e. executable GraphQL schemas that proxy queries to a remote GraphQL endpoint.
• “stitch“ together multiple subschemas by combining subschemas into a new schema, adding new fields, and enabling delegation of all or some of the new fields to existing subschemas.
• mock schemas by defining a default resolver on a per-type basis

You asked and we listened! With the integration of the Guild’s graphql-toolkit, merge-graphql-schemas, and the graphql-import libraries into a new graphql-tools monorepo, The new GraphQL Tools does all of the above and more:

• merge schemas prior to schema creation by merging typeDefs and/or resolvers (merge-graphql-schemas)
• import schemas within.. (previously graphql-import).
• optimize client side queries with relay compiler (relay-operation-optimizer)
• load resolvers and type definitions from your file system using glob expressions
• much, much more …

New Monorepo Structure

The new GraphQL Tools is split into different packages by functionality under the @graphql-tools scope. You can pick individual packages according to your needs instead of having one large package with unused functionalities in your project, which will significantly decrease bundle size. When bundle size is not an issue, you can still directly import all functionality directly from the graphql-tools package…

Some functions have been renamed to avoid conflicts between packages - see the migration guide for further help in upgrading.

Let’s talk about the improvements we have made in each area.

Building “SDL-First” GraphQL Schemas

The primary use case of the graphql-tools library is still the makeExecutableSchema function that enables users to start building their schemas directly from type definitions. This approach makes the SDL the single “source of truth“ for the entire graph.

Under the hood, as before, makeExecutableSchema calls out to upstream graphql-js functions to build the initial schema from type definitions, with the major contribution from graphql-tools of the addResolversToSchema function that can add resolvers and the other non-SDL GraphQL entities.

In older versions of GraphQL Tools, addResolversToSchema and the other schema modification functions did their work “in place,“ mutating the initial schema. GraphQL Tools now almost never does this, making the underlying schema modification functions safe and useful for other schema generation workflows and hopefully form a valuable independent contribution to the community.

Modify Schemas with Directives

For v6, we built a new — and more flexible — way of modifying existing schemas with directives. Instead of defining a new class that inherits from SchemaDirectiveVisitor, we export two powerful new functions that can work in tandem to modify schemas via one or more directives: mapSchema and getDirectives.

The mapSchema function allows one to create a new schema from an existing schema by defining individual mapping functions that map each GraphQL entity as specified.

The getDirectives function reaches from a given GraphQL entity to retrieve the directives with any arguments defined in the original SDL for that entity.

By passing user-defined mapping functions to mapSchema that make use of getDirectives function, one can introspect a schema for one (or more!) directives in as simple or complex a fashion as desired.

Create and Transform “Remote” GraphQL Schemas

Many users use GraphQL-Tools primarily to wrap remote GraphQL schemas, transforming them as necessary. In v6, multiple new transforms allow modification of output types on a per field level, including even initial support for wrapping and hoisting of fields.

In a performance boost, GraphQL Tools no longer requires two rounds of delegation to transform remote schemas. Previously, a remote schema was created with makeRemoteExecutableSchema and then transformSchema would wrap that schema with another layer of delegation, transforming as necessary.

In v6, wrapSchema now takes a GraphQL Tools-defined “schema config“ object instead of a schema, where the schema config properties allow specifying how to delegate to the remote schema as well as the transforms to apply. These changes mean that transforming a remote schema only requires one round of delegation instead of two.

Another important v6 change is that remote schema configuration properties are now executor and subscriber functions that return generic graphql-js results — rather than Apollo specific links. This increases interoperability between GraphQL Tools and the entire ecosystem, including paving the way for any changes to the Apollo link protocol coming in the future. Don’t worry, we provide linkToExecutor and linkToSubscriber functions for full Apollo link backwards compatibility!

Stitch Together Multiple Subschemas

We know Federation and other large scale GraphQL backend approaches are already out there, but GraphQL Tools schema stitching method remains — to our knowledge — the only way to combine and transform multiple remote schemas into a new and graphql-js community-wide compatible executable schema.

Schema stitching previously used up to at least three rounds of delegation when stitching (x1) to a transformed (x2) remote schema (x3). Now you can specify remote schema and transform properties directly when schema stitching, reducing that to a single delegation.

Schema stitching also now supports type merging from multiple remote subschemas, à la Federation — without requiring the remote schemas to be annotated with the Federation directives.

At the Guild, we use the schema stitching approach in our own tools. For example, you can see how we apply schema stitching to the different remote schemas generated from different sources in GraphQL Mesh repository.

Thank You to the GraphQL Community!

Thanks go to the Apollo team in opening up the graphql-tools repository, the steady work previously done within graphql-tools-fork, and also to the wider community, who have contributed additional functionality, tests, bug reports, and discussion, without which this release would not be possible.

GraphQL Tools is an extremely popular library that is used by many other popular libraries.

We’ve gone ahead and helped them with the upgrade, for example Gatsby.

At The Guild, we are hopeful to continue engaging the community and pushing for further improvements within the new GraphQL Tools and within the wider ecosystem. Let us know what you are looking for in GraphQL Tools v7!

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