solid-graphql-js experiment

This repo is a proof-of-concept demonstrating how we can query over the Solid ecosystem using spec-compliant GraphQL.

Warning

This code is experimental, it could change or disappear at any time and comes with no maintenance guarantees.

What is this for?

This codebase is designed to demonstrate one possible abstraction layer for querying in Solid. In this instance we are demonstrating how it is possible to query over Solid using a spec-compliant GraphQL engine backed by Comunica.

Usage

These packages build off graphql-js by providing custom directives to specify how fields evaluate fields in GraphQL schemas.

The key directives added are the @is (which is used to assert the rdf:type a particular object type must have when it is retrieved) and @property directive is used to specify the iri that should be looked up to get the value of an object field.

type Human @is(class: "http://example.org/Person") {
  // The `@identifier` here indicates that a particular
  // field should be assigned to the `iri` of the Thing that
  // is being queried.
  id: ID! @identifier
  name: String! @property(iri: "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label")
  biologicalMother: Human! @property(iri: "http://example.org/biologicalMother")
}

type Query {
  // The `@identifier` here indicates that we should be
  // looking up the Human associated to the `_id` iri that
  // was given as an input to the query.
  person(_id: ID! @identifier): Human!

  // Note if we wanted to query about the user that is
  // currently logged in then this can be written as
  // person: Human! @webId
}

schema {
  query: Query
}

We strongly recommend making use of codegen and the typed-document-node feature to enforce strict typings in code based on the GraphQL schema. The examples demonstrate our recommended setup which consists of the following codegen file

codegen.yml

schema: graphql/schemas/**/*.graphql
documents:
  - graphql/queries/*.graphql
generates:
  graphql/index.ts:
    plugins:
      - "@inrupt/experimental-graphql-codegen-solid"
      - typescript
      - typescript-operations
      - typed-document-node
    config:
      scalars:
        Date: Date
        URL: URL
        ID: string
        Float: number
        Int: number

This can be used to generate the solidQuery graphql query engine; and any queries defined in your /queries documents. This generated code can then be used as follows:

// Generated code
import { solidQuery, FetchPersonDocument } from "../graphql";
import { QueryEngine } from '@comunica/query-sparql-file';

async function myFunction() {
  const { data, errors } = await solidQuery({
    document: FetchPersonDocument,
    variables: {
      id: "https://id.inrupt.com/jeswr",
    },
    context: {
      // Any RDFJS compliant query engine can be used here
      sparqlEngine: new QueryEngine(),
      context: {
        sources: [
          "https://id.inrupt.com/jeswr"
        ],
      },
    },
  });

The returned data contains the query response if it successful. Otherwise the errors response will contain any errors caused during query execution.

For use in react see the solid-music demo.

Running the human demo

This demo shows how to run GraphQL queries over a local file

How to run:

npm install # (or npm ci)

# build the various modules and packages
npm run build

# start the development server
npm run demo:cli

Running the human-solid demo

This demo shows how to run GraphQL queries over a Solid Pod.

How to run:

npm install # (or npm ci)

# build the various modules and packages
npm run build

# start the development server
npm run demo:cli:solid

When prompted username and password are: [email protected] / abc123.

Running the human-solid-introspection demo

This demo shows how to run GraphQL queries over a Solid Pod - with the GraphQL schema generated from the FOAF vocabulary.

The generated schema can be found under examples/human-solid-introspection/.mesh/.

How to run:

npm install # (or npm ci)

# build the various modules and packages
npm run build

# start the development server
npm run demo:cli:solid:introspection

When prompted username and password are: [email protected] / abc123.

Running the solid-music demo

Warning this app is a PoC and is not stable; in particular the login flow is not stable in all browsers. Consequently, we recommend using Chromium based browsers for this demo.

A sample application built using the graphql components

How to run:

npm install # (or npm ci)

# build the various modules and packages
npm run build

# start the development server
npm run dev

Once logged into the application click sign in. The test server is the last option on the sign in page.

The default development server username and password are: [email protected] / abc123.

You can also log into solidweb.me with the credentials [email protected] / musicDemo

Note: Each of the solid-related demos is run against a local instance of the CSS, the data for the Pod that is created for the demo can be found in the /pod folder in each of the respective demos. If extending a demo and additional data is required for the query, it should be added to the relevant .ttl files in those folders.