Dynamic mutation document for react-apollo

Question

I need to change my mutation document dynamically to be able to create multiple items in a single mutation. So I have this function createOrderName that takes an integer and be able to create the correct mutation document. Eg. createOrderName(2) gets

mutation createOrderMut($input0: AddToOrderMenuItemConnectionInput!, $input1: AddToOrderMenuItemConnectionInput!) {
  input0: addToOrderMenuItemConnection (input:$input0) {
    changedOrderMenuItem {
      id
    }
  }
  input1: addToOrderMenuItemConnection (input:$input1) {
    changedOrderMenuItem {
      id
    }
  }
}

And my container is as follow.

const CartContainer = compose(
  graphql(createOrderName(2), {
    props: ({ mutate }) => ({
      addToOrderMenuItem: (menus, orderId) => mutate({
        variables: createOrdersInput(menus, orderId)
      })
    })
  })
)(CartView)

Now how can I pass an integer value to this mutation in order for it to create the correct mutation document? Currently it's fix to 2, but I need it to be more flexible so I can create any number of items...

Answer 1

This sounds like an unfortunate limitation of the backend you're working with. The right way to do a batch mutation would be to have a single mutation field on the server that accepts a list argument with all of the items you want to insert. Thus, Apollo isn't designed to support such dynamic query generation with the standard react-apollo API. That's because we strongly believe that working with static queries is much better than generating fields at runtime: https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/5-benefits-of-static-graphql-queries-b7fa90b0b69a#.hp710vxe7

Given the situation, though, sounds like generation the mutation string dynamically is a good option. You can do this by using Apollo directly instead of through the graphql HoC. You can use the withApollo HoC to do this: http://dev.apollodata.com/react/higher-order-components.html#withApollo

import { withApollo } from 'react-apollo';

const MyComponent = ({ client }) => {
  function mutate() {
    const dynamicMutationString = // generate mutation string here

    client.mutate({
      mutation: gql`${dynamicMutationString}`,
      variables: { ... },
    }).then(...);
  }

  return <button onClick={mutate}>Click here</button>;
}

const MyComponentWithApollo = withApollo(MyComponent);

We built this extra API for just this purpose - when the standard stuff is not enough.

Here are the docs for mutate btw: http://dev.apollodata.com/core/apollo-client-api.html#ApolloClient.mutate