mongodb - apollostack/graphql-server - how to get the fields requested in a query from resolver

Question

I am trying to figure out a clean way to work with queries and mongdb projections so I don't have to retrieve excessive information from the database. So assuming I have:

// the query
type Query {
  getUserByEmail(email: String!): User
}

And I have a User with an email and a username, to keep things simple. If I send a query and I only want to retrieve the email, I can do the following:

query { getUserByEmail(email: "test@test.com") { email } }

But in the resolver, my DB query still retrieves both username and email, but only one of those is passed back by apollo server as the query result.

I only want the DB to retrieve what the query asks for:

// the resolver
getUserByEmail(root, args, context, info) {
  // check what fields the query requested
  // create a projection to only request those fields
  return db.collection('users').findOne({ email: args.email }, { /* projection */ });
}

Of course the problem is, getting information on what the client is requesting isn't so straightforward.

Assuming I pass in request as context - I considered using context.payload (hapi.js), which has the query string, and searching it through various .split()s, but that feels kind of dirty. As far as I can tell, info.fieldASTs[0].selectionSet.selections has the list of fields, and I could check for it's existence in there. I'm not sure how reliable this is. Especially when I start using more complex queries.

Is there a simpler way?

In case you don't use mongDB, a projection is an additional argument you pass in telling it explicitly what to retrieve:

// telling mongoDB to not retrieve _id
db.collection('users').findOne({ email: 'test@test.com' }, { _id: 0 })

As always, thanks to the amazing community.

Answer 1

2020-Jan answer

The current answer to getting the fields requested in a GraphQL query, is to use the graphql-parse-resolve-info library for parsing the info parameter.

The library is "a pretty complete solution and is actually used under the hood by postgraphile", and is recommended going forward by the author of the other top library for parsing the info field, graphql-fields.