Laravel package: advanced usage

Be advised! This documentation will be removed in a future release. For current and up-to-date Laravel extension specific documentation, please see the Github repository.

The Laravel package comes with a number of features to ease the integration of GraphQLite in Laravel.

Support for Laravel validation rules

The GraphQLite Laravel package comes with a special #[Validate] attribute to use Laravel validation rules in your input types.

use TheCodingMachine\GraphQLite\Laravel\Annotations\Validate;

class MyController
{
    #[Mutation]
    public function createUser(
            #[Validate("email|unique:users")]
            string $email,
            #[Validate("gte:8")]
            string $password
        ): User
    {
        // ...
    }
}

You can use the #[Validate] attribute in any query / mutation / field / factory / decorator.

If a validation fails to pass, the message will be printed in the "errors" section and you will get a HTTP 400 status code:

{
    "errors": [
        {
            "message": "The email must be a valid email address.",
            "extensions": {
                "argument": "email"
            }
        },
        {
            "message": "The password must be greater than or equal 8 characters.",
            "extensions": {
                "argument": "password"
            }
        }
    ]
}

You can use any validation rule described in the Laravel documentation

Support for pagination

In your query, if you explicitly return an object that extends the Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator class, the query result will be wrapped in a "paginator" type.

class MyController
{
    /**
     * @return Product[]
     */
    #[Query]
    public function products(): Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator
    {
        return Product::paginate(15);
    }
}

Notice that:

• the method return type MUST BE Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator or a class extending Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator
• you MUST add a @return statement to help GraphQLite find the type of the list

Once this is done, you can get plenty of useful information about this page:

products {
    items {      # The items for the selected page
        id
        name
    }
    totalCount   # The total count of items.
    lastPage     # Get the page number of the last available page.
    firstItem    # Get the "index" of the first item being paginated.
    lastItem     # Get the "index" of the last item being paginated.
    hasMorePages # Determine if there are more items in the data source.
    perPage      # Get the number of items shown per page.
    hasPages     # Determine if there are enough items to split into multiple pages.
    currentPage  # Determine the current page being paginated.
    isEmpty      # Determine if the list of items is empty or not.
    isNotEmpty   # Determine if the list of items is not empty.
}

Be sure to type hint on the class (Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator) and not on the interface (Illuminate\Contracts\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator). The interface itself is not iterable (it does not extend Traversable) and therefore, GraphQLite will refuse to iterate over it.

Simple paginator

Note: if you are using simplePaginate instead of paginate, you can type hint on the Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator class.

class MyController
{
    /**
     * @return Product[]
     */
    #[Query]
    public function products(): Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator
    {
        return Product::simplePaginate(15);
    }
}

The behaviour will be exactly the same except you will be missing the totalCount and lastPage fields.

Using GraphQLite with Eloquent efficiently

In GraphQLite, you are supposed to put a #[Field] attribute on each getter.

Eloquent uses PHP magic properties to expose your database records. Because Eloquent relies on magic properties, it is quite rare for an Eloquent model to have proper getters and setters.

So we need to find a workaround. GraphQLite comes with a #[MagicField] attribute to help you working with magic properties.

#[Type]
#[MagicField(name: "id", outputType: "ID!")]
#[MagicField(name: "name", phpType: "string")]
#[MagicField(name: "categories", phpType: "Category[]")]
class Product extends Model
{
}

Please note that since the properties are "magic", they don't have a type. Therefore, you need to pass either the "outputType" attribute with the GraphQL type matching the property, or the "phpType" attribute with the PHP type matching the property.

Pitfalls to avoid with Eloquent

When designing relationships in Eloquent, you write a method to expose that relationship this way:

class User extends Model
{
    /**
     * Get the phone record associated with the user.
     */
    public function phone()
    {
        return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');
    }
}

It would be tempting to put a #[Field] attribute on the phone() method, but this will not work. Indeed, the phone() method does not return a App\Phone object. It is the phone magic property that returns it.

In short:

This does not work:

class User extends Model
{

    #[Field]
    public function phone()
    {
        return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');
    }
}

This works:

#[MagicField(name: "phone", phpType:"App\\Phone")]
class User extends Model
{
    public function phone()
    {
        return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');
    }
}

Export the schema from the CLI

The extension comes with a special command: graphqlite:export-schema.

Usage:

$ ./artisan graphqlite:export-schema --output=schema.graphql

This will export your GraphQL schema in SDL format. You can use this exported schema to import it in other tools (like graphql-codegen).