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GraphQL and typegen

Deploy process

The application uses GraphQL for communication. The build pipeline goes as follow:

  1. The Dialogporten project publishes the npm package @digdir/dialogporten-schma any time the schema changes. The package includes the raw graphql schema converted into a JavaScript file that exports it as a string and export the from the package.

  2. We add the @digdir/dialogporten-schema npm package as a dependency to our project bff.

  3. In the bff application we define our own GraphQL schema code-first, then we stitch it together with the schema we get from Dialogporten

  4. In bff-types-generated we import the stitched schema from bff

    • Then we define GraphQL queries and fragment queries that the frontend need in ./packages/bff-types-generated/queries

    • And then generate TypeScript types from the GraphQL schema as well as functions from the GraphQL queries

    • Only GraphQL types that we have defined a queries/fragment-queries for will actually be generated

  5. In the frontend we import the bff-types-generated package and have ready types and functions that we can use in the frontend

Development​

When dialogporten releases new schema versions​

  1. Update the package version in dialogporten-types-generated based on the newest verison

  2. Check for schema changes using npmdiff.dev and see if there is any breaking changes

  3. Rebuild the project to ensure that there are no new build problems

Caveats​

Currently there are no dev tasks that watches for changes setup in dialogporten-types-generated and bff-types-generated so you may need to rebuild the whole project if you do one of the followign changes:

  • Change the schema definitions in the bff. The bff itself will hot-reload but not the rest.

  • Change or write new Graph queries (and fragment queris) in bff-types-generated

TODO: using turborepo setup dev tasks and Docker watch statements for all of this so that it all rebuilds autoamtically