Validating client operations

You can confirm that all of the GraphQL operations defined in your client application are valid against the types, fields, and arguments in your graph's published schema. To do so, you use the apollo client:check command of the Apollo CLI:

1
$ apollo client:check
2

3
  ✔ Loading Apollo Project
4
  ✔ Checking client compatibility with service
5

6
GetTeamGrid: src/components/TeamGrid.jsx:4
7

8
    FAILURE    Field "league" must not have a selection since type "SportsLeague" has no subfields.
9

10
4 total operations validated
11
1 failure

You run this command from your client application's root. It recursively scans your project for the following:

• GraphQL operations wrapped in the gql tag
• Client-side schema extensions wrapped in the gql tag

By combining your registered graph's schema with your client-side schema extensions, the apollo client:check command can confirm whether the shape of each defined operation conforms to the shape of your combined schema.

Checking against a particular variant

During development, your application might be executing GraphQL operations against a locally running server with a schema that differs somewhat from your production server's schema. Because schemas can differ, it's important to always check your operations against the current schema for a particular environment before you push client changes to that environment.

If you represent each of your server's environments with a separate graph variant (recommended), you can check your operations against a particular variant's schema like so:

1
$ apollo client:check --variant=production

Using with continuous integration

Your application can incorporate client:check into its continuous delivery pipeline to help ensure that new and modified operations are valid before they go live.

Here's a Circle CI configuration excerpt that incorporates the command:

1
version: 2
2

3
jobs:
4
  # ...other jobs...
5

6
  # Define a separate job for each environment you validate against.
7
  check_against_staging:
8
    docker:
9
      - image: circleci/node:12
10

11
    steps:
12
      - checkout
13

14
      - run: npm install
15

16
      # CircleCI needs global installs to be sudo
17
      - run: sudo npm install --global apollo
18

19
      # This command authenticates using the `APOLLO_KEY` environment variable.
20
      # Don't forget to provide your API key in it.
21
      - run: npx apollo client:check --variant=staging