Getting started

What is typegql?

typegql is set of decorators allowing creating GraphQL APIs quickly and in type-safe way.

Creating very simple schema

Schema is main building block of any graphql schema. It'll join all parts of our api together.

In typegql to create schema, we need to pass class decorated with @Schema to compileSchema function

import { Schema, compileSchema} from 'typegql

@Schema()
class SuperSchema {
  // fields implementation
}

const compiledSchema = compileSchema(SuperSchema);

compiledSchema from example above is standard, regular graphql schema.

Adding Query and Mutation fields

Any working schema requires at least one Query field. There are special decorators - @Query and @Mutation used to register root fields of schema.

Very simple fully working schema like

{
  hello # will resolve to 'world'
}

Could be implemented as:

import { Schema, Query, compileSchema} from 'typegql

@Schema()
class SuperSchema {
  @Query()
  hello(): string {
    return 'world'
  }
}

const compiledSchema = compileSchema(SuperSchema);

Adding parameters

Let's add some customization to our schema:

{
  hello(name: "Bob") # will resolve to 'Hello, Bob!'
}

With tiny change in our code:

import { Schema, Query, compileSchema} from 'typegql

@Schema()
class SuperSchema {
  @Query()
  hello(name: string): string {
    return `Hello, ${name}!`;
  }
}

const compiledSchema = compileSchema(SuperSchema);

Adding nested types

For now, our query field returned scalar (string). Let's return something more complex. Schema will look like:

mutation {
  createProduct(name: "Chair", price: 99.99) {
    name
    price
    isExpensive
  }
}

Such query will have a bit more code and here it is:

import { Schema, Query, ObjectType, Field, Mutation, compileSchema} from 'typegql;

@ObjectType({ description: 'Simple product object type' })
class Product {
  @Field()
  name: string;

  @Field()
  price: number;

  @Field()
  isExpensive() {
    return this.price > 50;
  }
}

@Schema()
class SuperSchema {
  @Mutation()
  createProduct(name: string, price: number): Product {
    const product = new Product();
    product.name = name;
    product.price = price;
    return product;
  }
}

const compiledSchema = compileSchema(SuperSchema);

Forcing field type.

Since now, typegql was able to guess type of every field from typescript type definitions.

There are, however, some cases where we'd have to define them explicitly.

• We want to strictly tell if field is nullable or not
• Function we use returns type of Promise<SomeType> while field itself is typed as SomeType
• List (Array) type is used. (For now, typescript Reflect api is not able to guess type of single array item. This might change in the future)

Let's modify our Product so it has additional categories field that will return array of strings. For sake of readibility, I'll ommit all fields we've defined previously.

@ObjectType()
class Product {
  @Field({ type: String, isList: true }) // note we can use any native type like GraphQLString!
  categories(): string[] {
    return ['Tables', 'Furniture'];
  }
}

We've added { type: String, isList: true } as @Field options. Type can be anything that is resolvable to GraphQL type

• Native JS scalars: String, Number, Boolean.
• Any type that is already compiled to graphql eg. GraphQLFloat or any type from external graphql library etc
• Every class decorated with @ObjectType

Writing Asynchroniously

Every field function we write can be async and return Promise. Let's say, instead of hard-coding our categories, we want to fetch it from some external API:

@ObjectType()
class Product {
  @Field({ type: String, isList: true }) // note we can use any native type like GraphQLString!
  async categories(): Promise<string[]> {
    const categories = await api.fetchCategories();
    return categories.map(cat => cat.name);
  }
}

Adding to your project

Installation and setup

Important! setup steps are simple, but required. Make sure to check setup section.