❓ Querying for a specific track
We've updated our schema with new fields and the Module
type, but we still need a way to query for a specific track by its ID. To do that, we'll need to add another entry point to our schema.
In our schema.js
file in the server/src
folder, we can see that we only have a single entry point to our API so far: the tracksForHome
field that returns a list of Track
objects. Let's add another one called track
, which will return a single Track
.
Add the following field to our schema's Query
type:
track: Track
We'll be able to specify which unique track we're querying for by giving this field an argument.
🤔 How to use GraphQL arguments
An argument is a value you provide for a particular field in your query. The schema defines the arguments that each of your fields accepts.
Your resolvers can then use a field's provided arguments to help determine how to populate the data for that field. Arguments can help you retrieve specific objects, filter through a set of objects, or even transform the field's returned value. A query that performs a search usually provides the user's search term as an argument.
To define an argument for a field in our schema, we add parentheses after the field name. Inside, we write the name of the argument followed by a colon, then the type of that argument, like String
or Int
. If we have more than one argument, we can separate them with commas.
🙌 Using arguments
In our case, we want to use the track's ID as our argument. Following the syntax rules, we'll add the parentheses, then the name id
, with the type ID
which is required.
Inside the Query
type in schema.js
, update the track
field to:
"Fetch a specific track, provided a track's ID"track(id: ID!): Track
Update the schema below to add two new entry points: 1) Query for a specific spacecat
. This field takes an argument id
of type non-nullable ID
and returns a nullable SpaceCat
. 2) Query for a list of missions
. This field takes two arguments: to
of nullable type String
(to specify the mission destination), and scheduled
of nullable type Boolean
(to filter for scheduled or unscheduled missions). This field returns a nullable array of nullable Mission
s.
That's it for the query definition. We now have our schema up-to-date for the feature we're implementing. Onwards to the resolver!
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