HackJam Intro GraphQL

1. Your first queries

Go to the GitHub GraphQL API Explorer: https://developer.github.com/v4/explorer/

With the help of the documentation that you can toggle on the right upper side of the GraphiQL explorer, try to write:

A query to get the following information from the Hackages organization:
- Email
- Total number of repositories
Get the id of this repository
Try to give a star to this repository. HINT: you will need to use a mutation and the id of the repository (that you should have by now)

2. Implement your own API

Install

## yarn
yarn
yarn start

## npm
npm install
npm run start

Go to http://localhost:4000/, you should get a playground where you can type your query/mutation on the left side and see the result on the right side.

If everything is working correctly, you should be able to execute a hello query:

query helloWorld {
  hello
}

The resolver and type for this query are within the index.js file. You can try to change the return value of the resolver (for instance return an object instead of a string as defined in the typeDefs) and see what happens.

Create your own GraphQL type

Create a Movie type within the gql string literals. Try to write the movie type definition based on the shape of a movie that you can see in the mocks folder.

You can have a look at the GraphQL scalar types: https://graphql.org/learn/schema/#scalar-types

const typeDefs = gql`
  type Movie {
      // type definition
  }
`;

Now that we defined our Movie type, let's try to make a getMovies query.

Add a getMovies field under the Query type that should return an array of Movie. HINT: use the hello Query field as an example.

  type Query {
    getMovies: #return type
  }

It's time to implement the getMovies resolver now (the function which will be executed when we make a getMovies query). Each resolver has the following.

For now, this function should return the entire list of movies.

const resolvers = {
  Query: {
    getMovies(parents, args, ctx, info) {
      // return movies list
    }
  }
};

You can get information about resolvers signature here: https://www.apollographql.com/docs/apollo-server/essentials/data#type-signature

You should now be able to run this getMovies query within the playground. Try it with different movie fields and see how GraphQL let you granularly select what information you need! NOTE: You will probably have to refresh the playground to have the new type definitions updated.

Let's do the same now for the categories:

Define the Category type
Add a getCategories field to the Query type
Implement the corresponding resolver
Verify that your getCategories query works (via the playground)

As you've probably seen by now, a Movie is attributed to a list of Category through the category_ids field of the Movie type. Wouldn't it be better to be able to retrieve the list of category (and their details) when asking for a Movie ?

To make that possible, we should slightly modify our Movie type. Add a categories field to the Movie type. HINT: use the Category type we've defined previously.

type Movie {
  #Existing fields
  categories: ... #Use the Category type we've defined
}

Then, create a Movie resolver field (next to the Query field) and describe how to resolve the categories:

const resolvers = {
  Query: {
    //...
  }
  Movie: {
    categories: (parent, args, ctx, info) => {
      // Return the categories
    }
  },
}

HINT: Only the categories from the currently resolved movie should be returned. Inspect the parent parameter to check if you can grab useful information from there.

Don't forget to try your solution via the playground! Again, see how we can exactly define which fields we want to get back from the server, and so even for the children

Let's now do the same but in the other way around: add the possibility to retrieve the list of movies from a category:

Add a movies field to the Category type
Implement the corresponding resolver
Test your solution through the playground

Cool! Now let's allow a user to get the movies from a specific category.

Change the getMovies Query field to accept an optional category string.
Adapt the getMovies resolver to only return movies from the specific category only if the filter is present. HINT: the category filter can be accessed through the resolver's arg parameter. HINT: You can use the getMoviesForCategory within the utils.js file to help you. This function take the category name as parameter.
Test your implementation via the playground.

Okay, now let's add the possibility to add a vote for a movie. Since we're going to change our data, we will use this time a Mutation:

First, we need to define your Mutation type:

type Mutation {
  addVote(movie_id: ID!): Movie!
}

The addVote mutation take a required mutation_id param and return a Movie.

Now, let's implement the resolver:

Mutation: {
  addVote: (parent, args, ctx, info) => {
    // Try to figure out what to do here
  };
}

Don't forget to try this Mutation via the playground!

3. Still hungry ?