Generating code from external schemas in JARs - META-INF requirement

[deweyjose]

Hi team,

Curious why there is a requirement for schema files in external jars to exist under the META-INF folder.

This was uncovered in a maven graphql-codegen plugin project here. I'll update our documentation, but wondering why this is a requirement and does it make sense to update the documentation?

[srinivasankavitha]

Usually schema files are added under src/main/resources for graphql projects and hence we scan for the META-INF folder in codegen. Thanks for pointing out the documentation gap, we need to fix that.

[srinivasankavitha]

Fixed the docs here: Netflix/dgs@a518e6d

[deweyjose]

@srinivasankavitha

Usually schema files are added under src/main/resources for graphql projects and hence we scan for the META-INF folder in codegen. Thanks for pointing out the documentation gap, we need to fix that.

Even though the graphqls files are typically under src/main/resources they do not necessarily get packaged in the jar under META-INF. This requirement seems odd to me. All of the .graphql files in the jars I produce are packaged outside of META-INF.

Even Apollo's Federation graphqls files are not packaged under META-INF.

Why does the code need to enforce the META-INF prefix vs scanning the entire Jar?

[deweyjose]

It looks like DGS decided to package error related schema in graphql-error-types under src/main/resources/META-INF/schema which is why it's packaged that way, but not all teams want to structure their codebases this way.

[srinivasankavitha]

Ok, I see. At the time of adding this feature, our primary use case was to pick up schemas under META-INF and from other modules in a given project that has schemas under META-INF, so the current implementation addresses that requirement. But for other external dependencies it would not work as you just pointed out. We could enhance this implementation to scan for .graphqls files more generally as well I suppose.

[deweyjose]

@srinivasankavitha thanks for taking a second look and reconsidering!