Federated Type Resolution

In traditional (i.e. non-federated) GraphQL servers, each one of the output types is accessible through a traversal of the GraphQL schema from a corresponding query, mutation or subscription root type. Since federated GraphQL types might be accessed outside of the query path we need a mechanism to access them in a consistent manner.

_entities query

A federated GraphQL server provides a custom _entities query that allows retrieving any of the federated extended types. The _entities query accept list of "representation" objects that provide all required fields to resolve the type and return an _Entity union type of all supported federated types. Representation objects are just a map of all the fields referenced in @key directives as well as the target __typename information. If federated query type fragments also reference fields with @requires and @provides directives, then those referenced fields should also be specified in the target representation object.

note

_entities queries are automatically generated by the federated gateway and their usage is transparent for the gateway clients.

query ($_representations: [_Any!]!) {
  _entities(representations: $_representations) {
    ... on SomeFederatedType {
      fieldA
      fieldB
    }
  }
}

Federated Type Resolver

In order to simplify the integrations, graphql-kotlin-federation provides a default _entities query resolver that retrieves the FederatedTypeResolver that is used to resolve the specified __typename.

FederatedTypeResolver.typeName specifies the GraphQL type name that should match up to the __typename field in the _entities query.

FederatedTypeResolver.resolve accepts a list of representations of the target types which should be resolved in the same order as they were specified in the list of representations. Each passed in representation should either be resolved to a target entity or NULL if entity cannot be resolved.

// This service does not own the "Product" type but is extending it with new fields
@KeyDirective(fields = FieldSet("id"))
@ExtendsDirective
class Product(@ExternalDirective val id: String) {
  fun newField(): String = getNewFieldByProductId(id)
}

// This is how the "Product" class is created from the "_entities" query
class ProductResolver : FederatedTypeResolver<Product> {
    override val typeName: String = "Product"

    override suspend fun resolve(representations: List<Map<String, Any>>): List<Product?> = representations.map {
        val id = it["id"]?.toString()

        // Instantiate product using id, otherwise return null
        if (id != null) {
            Product(id)
        } else {
            null
        }
    }
}

// If you are using "graphql-kotlin-spring-server", your FederatedTypeResolvers can be marked as Spring beans
// and will automatically be added to the hooks
val resolvers = listOf(productResolver)
val hooks = FederatedSchemaGeneratorHooks(resolvers)
val config = FederatedSchemaGeneratorConfig(supportedPackages = listOf("org.example"), hooks = hooks)
val schema = toFederatedSchema(config)