Querying on the Server

Most of the Data Layer section’s contents applies to the client. After all, if you’re on the server, you can simply connect to your database directly, so why would you need to worry about the data layer?

But the truth is that connecting to the database directly can lead to problems. For example, let’s assume you have a user resolver on your Post type that gives you access to the post’s author. On the client, you could write:

1

const authorName = post.user.displayName;

On the server, it’s easy enough to obtain that post document:

1

const post = Posts.findOne(documentId);

But the document you fetch directly from MongoDB won’t have a user property, let alone a user.displayName (since those are provided by the GraphQL resolver).

Thankfully, VulcanJS features a few special utilities to let you query for data through GraphQL on the server

runGraphQL(query, variables)

runGraphQL lets you execute any GraphQL query or mutation against your schema and get its result back on the server.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

import { runGraphQL } from 'meteor/vulcan:core';

async function foo = () => {
  
  const query = `
    query OneRoom($documentId: String){
      RoomsSingle(documentId: $documentId){
        name
        description
        user{
          _id
          displayName
        }
      }
    }
  `;
  return await runGraphQL(query, {documentId: '123foo'});

}

(Note that you’ll need to be inside an async context to use the await keyword)

collection.queryOne(inputOrId, options)

A common need on the server is fetching a single document by its _id. You can do so with collection.queryOne. The first argument is either a string _id, or a full input object (as used by single queries).

The second argument is an options object with a fragmentText property. If no fragment is provided, the query will use the collection’s defaultFragment.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

const user = await Users.queryOne(userId);

// or

const user = await Users.queryOne(userId, {
  fragmentText: `
    fragment MyUsersFragment on User {
      _id
      username
      createdAt
      posts{
        _id
        title
      }
    }
  `
});

queryOne vs load

It might seem like queryOne does the same thing as the Dataloader layer‘s load, but there’s a crucial difference in how they’re used.

queryOne uses your existing GraphQL resolvers behind the scenes, which means it itself can’t be used inside a resolver (or you’d risk an infinite loop). It’s thus meant to be used from outside of your GraphQL resolver tree, from a server script, cron job, migration, etc. or any kind of server code unrelated to the client.

load on the other hand is specifically made to be used inside resolvers and add a caching and batching layer to them.