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orktes avatar orktes commented on March 29, 2024 1

Thanks for the quick answer!

"DangerousUserProvidedUnstructuredJSON" inspired me to find a way to convert the old unstructured data into something structured :D

Closing....

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chrisabrams avatar chrisabrams commented on March 29, 2024 1

@orktes could you provide an example of how you are trying to use this with a query? I tried doing something similar but cannot seem to figure out how to format the query.

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leebyron avatar leebyron commented on March 29, 2024

Can you explain what you mean by abstract types in this context? In GraphQL "abstract types" has a concrete definition of Union or Interface types.

If I understand correctly (and please correct me if I don't), the data in question is just unstructured and unpredictable, and so you can't write sane queries against it. Is the fact that you represent the data as JSON is a coincidence, and it could have just as easily been binary data, or anything else?

We have a few rare places in Facebook where data operates this way, and we've exposed it through GraphQL as a String, where we actually JSON encode the data on the way out, rather than embedding it directly. This ensures clients don't accidentally index into the data thinking that it is safe, instead requiring an explicit JSON decode to access the unsafe user provided data.

Otherwise, I don't think what you've done here is all that bad, though I may suggest changing the type from "Anything" to "JSON" or something along that line.

Maybe you could offer how you expected or hoped this sort of thing would work?

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orktes avatar orktes commented on March 29, 2024

Sorry using "abstract" in this context was a little bit vague, but you understood me correctly :) The data in our case is always JSON (even distinction between object and array is known) but it is otherwise unstructured.

I went with JSON encoding + GraphQLString at first also but that would have resulted in additional refactoring on the client side views so decided to look for something that keeps the old structure of our data.

GraphQLJSONObject is actual naming I use but decided to use GraphQLAnything for the snippet to broaden the question area so discussion here might help people with more varied needs.

I'm otherwise fine with doing it like this, but wanted to ask if mixing non-scalar values with GraphQLScalarType would result in possible side effects now or in the future?

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leebyron avatar leebyron commented on March 29, 2024

I don't think there are any side-effects to worry about. GraphQL will treat this value as a "scalar" as in a "leaf-value" - it just so happens that the output format is just raw.

I would suggest avoiding using naming like "Anything" because it sounds like something to be used. Even "JSONObject" is maybe too reasonable :). I'd suggest something like "DangerousUserProvidedUnstructuredJSON" :P - maybe that's a little extreme, but any way to clearly explain the difference between your well-typed data and ¯_(ツ)_/¯ data is going to be useful.

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leebyron avatar leebyron commented on March 29, 2024

One last note: as currently written your coerceLiteral method will only work on simple scalar inputs. If you only need GraphQL to describe the output of these unstructured blobs, then maybe even just put a throw Error() in there... otherwise you may need to focus a little more attention on the array/object literal input cases.

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leebyron avatar leebyron commented on March 29, 2024

Nice! Best of luck

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ac10n avatar ac10n commented on March 29, 2024

@leebyron
Now in 2021, has anything changed about this discussion?
Is there now some other ways to expose unstructured data? Or a scalar string field that contains json representation is still a best practice?

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