graphql-trebuchet-client

A graphql client to get your subscriptions through tough firewalls and unreliable mobile networks

Why?

GraphQL subscriptions are important. Some corporate firewalls block long-running requests like WebSockets. This gets through them, one way or another.

What's it do?

• This is just a GraphQL protocol layer, which sits on top of the connection layer
• Keeps track of your fetches & subscriptions
• Resubscribes when the connection is ended prematurely
• Supports multiple responses for the same fetch, allowing for partial resutls using e.g. @defer

How's it different from other graphql client libs?

• This lib won't fail silently when WebSockets fail
• This lib has a pure separation of concerns between connectivity & GraphQL messages
• Other libs do too much so they can lock you into their monolithic trap (don't get got!)
• Supports enforced casual ordering

What's the protocol?

From the client:

• An operations MAY have an id string
• If id is provided, the server MUST reply, else it MAY not (e.g. analytics mutation)
• An operation has a type, and payload
• The type MUST be start or stop
• a start payload MAY include a query param, or a documentId param (for persisted queries)
• a stop operation MUST include the id of the operation to unsubscribe from
• The client MUST send a single operation (batching is left up to the transport)

From the server:

• An operation has an id, type, and payload
• The id MUST match the id of the request
• The type MUST be data, error, or complete
• The payload MUST be a GraphQLResult ({data, errors})
• If the type is data, the client MUST call sink.next
• If the type is error, the client MUST call sink.error with an Error instance
• If the type is complete, the client MUST call sink.next iif a payload is present and call sink.complete after

API

These are the methods you'll probably want to call.

• fetch({query, cacheConfig, variables}, sink): Call this for all queries/mutations
• subscribe({query, variables}, sink): Disposable: Call this to start a subscription. Call the return value to stop it.
• close(): Unsubscribe from everything and prevent a reconnect. Useful for logouts.

Example

import getTrebuchet, {SocketTrebuchet, SSETrebuchet} from '@mattkrick/trebuchet-client'
import GQLTrebuchetClient, {GQLHTTPClient} from '@mattkrick/graphql-trebuchet-client'

// you can use a plain old websocket here if you don't want to use trebuchet-client.
const trebuchet = await getTrebuchet(settings)
const transport = new GQLTrebuchetClient(trebuchet)
const myFetch = (query, variables) => {
  // If 2 mutations with the same casualOrderingGroup get called in order A,B,
  // then the server response for A is guaranteed to get dispatched before B
  const cacheConfig = {metadata: {casualOrderingGroup: 'orderedStochasticMutations'}}
  // note using a promise is easy to get started, but means you can't return multiple responses
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    return transport.fetch({query, cacheConfig, variables}, {
      next(result): {
        resolve(result)
      },
      error(error): {
        reject(error)
      },
      complete(maybeResult): {
        resolve(result)
      }
    })
  })

transport.subscribe({query, variables}, subSink)