Getting started
- Activating the default server
- Open up the default server that comes pre-configured with the module
- Configuring your schema
- Add a basic type to the schema configuration
- Building the schema
- Turn your schema configuration into executable code
- Building a schema with procedural code
- Use PHP code to build your schema
- Deploying the schema
- Deploy your GraphQL schema to a test or production environment
You are viewing docs for silverstripe/graphql 4.x. If you are using 3.x, documentation can be found in the GitHub repository
Configuring your schema
GraphQL is a strongly-typed API layer, so having a schema behind it is essential. Simply put:
- A schema consists of types
- Types consist of fields
- Fields can have arguments.
- Fields need to be resolved
Queries are just fields on a type called "query". They can take arguments, and they must be resolved.
There's a bit more to it than that, and if you want to learn more about GraphQL, you can read the full documentation, but for now, these three concepts will serve almost all of your needs to get started.
Initial setup
To start your first schema, open a new configuration file. Let's call it graphql.yml
.
# app/_config/graphql.yml
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema:
schemas:
# your schemas here
Let's populate a schema that is pre-configured for us out of the box called "default".
# app/_config/graphql.yml
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema:
schemas:
default:
config:
# general schema config here
types:
# your generic types here
models:
# your DataObjects here
queries:
# your queries here
mutations:
# your mutations here
enums:
# your enums here
Avoid config flushes
Because the schema definition is only consumed at build time and never used at runtime, it doesn't
make much sense to store it in the configuration layer, because it just means you'll
have to flush=1
every time you make a schema update, which will slow down your builds.
It is recommended that you store your schema YAML outside of the _config directory to increase performance and remove the need for flushing when you build your schema.
This doesn't mean there is never a need to flush=1
when building your schema. If you were to add a new
schema, make a change to the value of this src
attribute, or create new PHP classes, those are still
standard config changes which won't take effect without a flush.
We can do this by adding a src
key to our app/_config/graphql.yml
schema definition
that maps to a directory relative to the project root.
# app/_config/graphql.yml
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema:
schemas:
default:
src:
- app/_graphql
Your src
must be an array. This allows further source files to be merged into your schema.
This feature can be use to extend the schema of third party modules.
Your directory can also be relative to a module reference, e.g. somevendor/somemodule: _graphql
:
# app/_config/graphql.yml
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema:
schemas:
default:
src:
- app/_graphql
- module/_graphql
# The next line would map to `vendor/somevendor/somemodule/_graphql`
- 'somevendor/somemodule: _graphql'
Now, in the new app/_graphql
folder, we can create YAML file definitions.
# app/_graphql/schema.yml
# no schema key needed. it's implied!
config:
# your schema config here
types:
# your generic types here
models:
# your DataObjects here
bulkLoad:
# your bulk loader directives here
queries:
# your queries here
mutations:
# your mutations here
enums:
# your enums here
Namespacing your schema files
Your schema YAML file will get quite bloated if it's just used as a monolithic source of truth
like this. We can tidy this up quite a bit by simply placing the files in directories that map
to the keys they populate -- e.g. config/
, types/
, models/
, queries/
, mutations/
, etc.
There are two approaches to namespacing:
- By filename
- By directory name
Namespacing by filename
If the filename is named one of the seven keywords used in the app/_graphql/schema.yml
example above, it will be implicitly placed
in the corresponding section of the schema - e.g. any configuration
added to app/_graphql/config.yml
will be implicitly added to
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default.config
.
This only works in the root source directory (i.e. app/_graphql/some-directory/config.yml
will not work).
# app/_graphql/config.yml
# my config here
# app/_graphql/types.yml
# my types here
# app/_graphql/models.yml
# my models here
# app/_graphql/enums.yml
# my enums here
# app/_graphql/bulkLoad.yml
# my bulk loader directives here
Namespacing by directory name
If you use a parent directory name (at any depth) of one of the seven keywords, it will
be implicitly placed in the corresponding section of the schema - e.g. any configuration
added to a .yml
file in app/_graphql/config/
will be implicitly added to
SilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default.config
.
The names of the actual files here do not matter. You could for example have a separate file
for each of your types, e.g. app/_graphql/types/my-first-type.yml
.
# app/_graphql/config/config.yml
# my config here
# app/_graphql/types/types.yml
# my types here
# app/_graphql/models/models.yml
# my models here
# app/_graphql/enums/enums.yml
# my enums here
# app/_graphql/bulkLoad/bulkLoad.yml
# my bulk loader directives here
Going even more granular
These special directories can contain multiple files that will all merge together, so you can even create one file per type, or some other convention. All that matters is that the parent directory name or the filename matches one of the schema keys.
The following are perfectly valid:
app/_graphql/config/config.yml
maps toSilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default.config
app/_graphql/types/allElementalBlocks.yml
maps toSilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default.types
app/_graphql/news-and-blog/models/blog.yml
maps toSilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default.models
app/_graphql/mySchema.yml
maps toSilverStripe\GraphQL\Schema\Schema.schemas.default
Schema config
Each schema can declare a generic configuration section, config
. This is mostly used for assigning
or removing plugins and resolvers.
An important subsection of config
is modelConfig
, where you can configure settings for specific
models, e.g. DataObject
.
Like the other sections, it can have its own config.yml
, or just be added as a config:
mapping to a generic schema YAML document.
# app/_graphql/config.yml
modelConfig:
DataObject:
plugins:
inheritance: true
operations:
read:
plugins:
readVersion: false
paginateList: false
You can learn more about plugins and resolvers in the query plugins, plugins, building a custom query, and resolver discovery sections.
Defining a basic type
Let's define a generic type for our GraphQL schema.
Generic types don't map to DataObject
classes - they're useful for querying more 'generic' data (hence the name).
You'll learn more about adding DataObjects in working with DataObjects.
# app/_graphql/types.yml
Country:
fields:
name: String
code: String
population: Int
languages: '[String]'
If you're familiar with GraphQL type language, this should look pretty familiar.
There are only a handful of scalar types available in GraphQL by default. They are:
- String
- Int
- Float
- Boolean
To define a type as a list, you wrap it in brackets: [String]
, [Int]
To define a type as required (non-null), you add an exclamation mark: String!
Often times, you may want to do both: [String!]!
Look out for the footgun, here. Make sure your bracketed type is in quotes
(i.e. '[String]'
, not [String]
), otherwise it's valid YAML that will get parsed as an array!
That's all there is to it! To learn how we can take this further, check out the working with generic types documentation. Otherwise, let's get started on adding some DataObjects.