Apollo-server: Upgrading GraphiQL

[swarthout]

Now that graphiql is decoupled from the rest of apollo server, we have the opportunity to provide an upgraded version of graphiql. The website http://toolbox.sangria-graphql.org/graphiql has a really nice one with support for multiple queries, multiple endpoint urls, and headers. The repo for the above website is here: https://github.com/OlegIlyenko/graphql-toolbox. I was wondering if you would accept a pull request to implement this new graphiql in apollo server?

[helfer]

Yeah, I think that's a great idea! My preferred way would be that you make a PR which adds an optional argument to the GraphiQL middleware that lets users provide a custom renderGraphiQL function, and then wrap the one from graphql-toolbox in such a function either in their package or in a separate package that you create just for that. Does that make sense?

[swarthout]

I understand what you want for the graphiql middleware, but I have a few questions about the implementation. Right now the current graphiql middleware returns the html page as a string, so would my package simply expose a function that returns a different stringified html page with the modified graphiql? I understand you don't want to add the overhead of using a module bundler like webpack, but returning strings doesn't seem very sustainable.

[helfer]

Personally I think it would make more sense to use a bundler like webpack to build it, because that would also let you use it offline (right now it uses some CDNs). If you put it in a separate package, then you can build the bundle in whichever way you want. The only requirement is that it exports a function with the same signature as renderGraphiQL. Once you have that, I think the modifications to apollo-server required to make it work with express, hapi and Koa will be minimal.

[helfer]

@swarthout let me know if something I said doesn't make sense. I think it would be really cool if you could do this, and I'd be more than happy to make the necessary API changes to support any GraphiQL clients that people want to use.

[swarthout]

What you said makes sense, I'll see what I can do. I am moving next week so I'm going to be super busy for a little while, but I'll check in with progress and questions.

[eugene1g]

I wanted to use the latest GraphiQL, but did not want to bother with webpack etc. Instead I created a custom route with a static HTML file to serve the always-current version from CDN. Maybe someone else will find it useful - https://gist.github.com/eugene1g/d062c26603845ba839e049fc4be578c7

[helfer]

see #192