GraphQL Core

A set of core GraphQL utilities that MakerX uses to build GraphQL APIs.

These utilities avoid dependencies on any particular GraphQL server or logging implementation, providing a standard set of behaviours to use across varying implementations.

Note: See explanation on *Express peer dependency below.

Context

createContextFactory returns a function that creates your GraphQL context using a standard (extensible) representation, including:

• logger: a logger instance to use downstream of resolvers, usually logging some request metadata to assist correlating log entries (for example the X-Correlation-Id header value)
• requestInfo: useful request info, for example to define per-request behaviour (multi-tenant apps), pass through correlation headers to downstream services etc
• user: an object representing the user or system identity (see definition below, defaults to creating a User based on JWT claims)
• anything else you wish to add to the context

Step 1 - Define your context + creation

context.ts

// define the base context type, setting the logger type
type BaseContext = GraphQLContextBase<Logger>
// define the extra stuff added to our app's context
type ExtraContext = {
  services: Services
  loaders: Loaders
}
// our app's context type, returned from the createContext function
export type GraphQLContext = BaseContext & ExtraContext

// configure the createContext function
export const createContext = createContextFactory<GraphQLContext>({
  // set the keys of the user claims (JWT payload) we want added to the request metadata passed to the requestLogger factory
  claimsToLog: ['oid', 'aud', 'tid', 'azp', 'iss', 'scp', 'roles'],
  // set the keys of the request info we want added to the request metadata passed to the requestLogger factory
  requestInfoToLog: ['origin', 'requestId', 'correlationId'],
  // use a winston child logger to add metadata to log output
  requestLogger: (requestMetadata) => logger.child(requestMetadata),
  // build the rest of the app context
  augmentContext: (context): ExtraContext => {
    const services = createServices(context)
    const loaders = createLoaders(services)
    return { services, loaders }
  },
})

Step 2 - Map the context creation to implementation

These examples show how you might map implementation-specific context functions to your implementation-agnostic context creation function (from step 1). Note: examples assume that a JWT auth middleware has set req.user to the decoded token payload (claims). This is optional.

app.ts

// wire up the createContext function, providing `ContextInput` for apollo-server-express implementation)
const server = new ApolloServer({
  ...apolloServerConfig,
  context: ({ req }) => createContext({ req, claims: req.user }),
})

lambda.ts

// wire up the createContext function, providing `ContextInput` for apollo-server-lambda implementation
const server = new ApolloServer({
  ...apolloServerConfig,
  context: ({ event, context, express: { req } }) =>
    createContext({ req, claims: req.user, event: event as LambdaEvent, context: context as LambdaContext }),
})

yoga.ts

// wire up the createContext function, providing `ContextInput` for graphql-yoga implementation
const graphqlServer = createServer({
  ...yogaServerConfig,
  context: ({ req }) => createContext({ req, claims: req.user }),
})

User

By default, if claims (decoded token JwtPayload) are available, the GraphQLContext.user property will be set by constructing a User instance.

The User class adds some handy getters over raw claims (decodedJWT payload) and provides access to the JWT (access token) for on-behalf-of downstream authentication flows. Note this may represent a user or service principal (system) identity.

Property	Description
claims	The decoded JWT payload, set via the RequestInput.user field.
token	The bearer token from the request authorization header.
email	The user's email via coalesced claim values: email, emails, preferred_username, unique_name, upn.
name	The user's name (via the name or given_name and family_name claims).
id	The user's unique and immutable ID, useful for contextual differentiation e.g. session keys (the oid or sub claim).
scopes	The user's scopes, via the scp claim split into an array of scopes.
roles	The user's roles (via the roles claim).

Custom user

If you wish to customise your GraphQLContext.user object, provide a createUser function to override the default User creation.

const createUser: CreateUser = async ({ claims }) => {
  const roles = await loadRoles(claims.email)
  return { name: claims.name, email: claims.email, roles }
}

const graphqlServer = createServer({
  ...config,
  context: ({ req }) => createContext({ req, claims: req.user, createUser }),
})

Logging

logGraphQLOperation

Logs a GraphQL operation in a consistent format with the option of including any additional data. Top level and result level log data with null or undefined values will be omitted for berevity.

Refer to the GraphQLLogOperationInfo type for the definition of input.

This function can be used across implementations, e.g. in a GraphQL Envelop plugin or ApolloServer plugin.

GraphQL subscriptions

This library includes a subscriptions module to provide simple setup using the GraphQL WS package.

1. Install subscriptions dependencies (optional peer dependencies of this package):

   npm i graphql-ws ws
   

2. Subscription context setup:

   createSubscriptionContextFactory returns a function that creates an equivalent GraphQL context using input supplied to the graphql-ws Server context callback.

   Example showing both normal context + subscription context creation:

   const augmentContext = (context: GraphQLContext) => {
     const services = createServices(context)
     const dataLoaders = createDataLoaders()
     return { services, dataSource, dataLoaders }
   }
   
   // create a context using request based input
   const createContext = createContextFactory<GraphQLContext>({
     claimsToLog,
     requestInfoToLog,
     requestLogger: (requestMetadata) => logger.child(requestMetadata),
     createUser: ({ claims, req }) => findUpdateOrCreateUser(claims, req.headers.authorization?.substring(7)),
     augmentContext,
   })
   
   // create a context using graphql-ws Server#context callback input
   const createSubscriptionContext = createSubscriptionContextFactory<GraphQLContext>({
     claimsToLog
     requestInfoToLog,
     requestLogger: (requestMetadata) => logger.child(requestMetadata),
     createUser: ({ claims, connectionParams }) => findUpdateOrCreateUser(claims, extractTokenFromConnectionParams(connectionParams)),
     augmentContext,
   })

3. Create a subscriptions server, using the ws-server cleanup function in your server lifecycle.

   The useSubscriptionsServer function sets up:

   • Auth token validation as part of establishing (or rejecting) the connection (behaviour defined by verifyToken and requireAuth args)
   • GraphQL context creation
   • Logging from the server onConnect, onDisconnect, onOperation, onNext and onError callbacks

   Example for Apollo Server (wsServerCleanup called in the drainServer plugin callback):

    export const startApolloServer = async (app: Express, httpServer: http.Server) => {
      logger.info('Building schema')
      const schema = createSchema()
   
      logger.info('Initialising subscriptions websocket server')
      const wsServerCleanup = useSubscriptionsServer({
        schema,
        httpServer,
        logger,
        createSubscriptionContext,
        jwtClaimsToLog: config.get('logging.userClaimsToLog'),
        requireAuth: true,
        verifyToken: (host, token) => verifyForHost(host, token, config.get('auth.bearer')),
      })
   
      logger.info('Starting apollo server')
      const server = new ApolloServer<GraphQLContext>({
        schema,
        plugins: plugins(httpServer, wsServerCleanup),
        introspection: true,
        csrfPrevention: true,
      })
      await server.start()

4. For authorisation, clients can include a connection parameter named authorization or Authorization using the HTTP header format Bearer <token>. Note: Apollo Sandbox will include an Authorization connection parameter when you specify an HTTP Authorization header via the UI.

Testing

The testing submodule exports utility functions for easily constructing ApolloClient instances for integration testing on NodeJS. The errorPolicy is set to all so that returned errors can be checked.

Setup

If you use this module, you need to install @apollo/client:

npm install --save-dev @apollo/client

Usage

• createTestClient accepts a url and optional accessToken.
• createTestClientWithClientCredentials accepts a url and client credentials config and will fetch and attach an access token to each request.

testing.ts

export const testClient = createTestClientWithClientCredentials(process.env.INTEGRATION_TEST_URL, clientCredentialsConfig)

export const unauthenticatedClient = createTestClient(process.env.INTEGRATION_TEST_URL)

tweets.spec.ts

describe('tweets query', () => {
  const tweetsQuery = gql`
    query Tweets($input: TweetsWhere) {
      tweets(input: $input) {
        data {
          text
          createdAt
        }
      }
    }
  `

  it('returns tweets with sensible default limit', async () => {
    const {
      data: { tweets },
      errors,
    } = await testClient.query<TweetsQuery>({
      query: tweetsQuery,
    })

    expect(errors).toBeUndefined()
    expect(tweets).toBeDefined()
    expect(tweets?.data?.length).toBe(10)
  })

  it('guards against high limit', async () => {
    const tooHighLimit = 101
    await expect(async () => {
      await testClient.query<TweetsQuery, TweetsQueryVariables>({
        query: tweetsQuery,
        variables: {
          input: {
            maxResults: tooHighLimit,
          },
        },
      })
    }).rejects.toThrowErrorMatchingInlineSnapshot(`"Response not successful: Received status code 400"`)
  })

  it('requires authorisation', async () => {
    const { data, errors } = await unauthenticatedClient.query<TweetsQuery, TweetsQueryVariables>({
      query: tweetsQuery,
    })

    expect(data.tweets).toBeNull()
    expect(errors?.length).toBe(1)
    expect(errors?.[0].message).toMatchInlineSnapshot(`"User is not authorized to access Query.tweets"`)
  })
})

Utils

• isIntrospectionQuery: indicates whether the query is an introspection query, based on the operation name or query content.

*Express peer dependency

ApolloServer v3 standardises on the Express request representation.

GraphQL Yoga uses the NodeJS http request representation, plus adds the Express version when using an Express server.

This library therefore takes a peer dependency on Express as the standard (common) request representation.

The ApolloServer v4 roadmap will standardise on the NodeJS http request representation.

This library may swap to the NodeJS http representation in a future version.