how to use .graphql in a typescript node project without webpack

Question

I have a node, express server using expressGraphql. I am trying to declare a type definition for graphql in a .graphql or .gql file, because as the type gets larger, it becomes difficult to read the string.

Here is what I have:

import testQuery from './test.graphql';

import routes from "./routes";

import { buildSchema } from "graphql";

const schema = buildSchema(testQuery);

// Root resolver
const root = {
    message: () => "Hello World!",
};

app.use(
    "/api/graphql",
    expressGraphQL({
        schema,
        graphiql: true,
    })
);

My graphql file. //test.graphql

type Book {
    message: String
}

I get an error because Typescript

Cannot find module './test.graphql'.

I have seen people doing this:

const { makeExecutableSchema } = require('graphql-tools');

const schemaFile = path.join(__dirname, 'schema.graphql');
const typeDefs = fs.readFileSync(schemaFile, 'utf8');

const schema = makeExecutableSchema({ typeDefs });

Is this the way of doing it?

So what do I need to to config typescript to be able to import, and build the schema

Answer 1

You can use https://github.com/ardatan/graphql-import-node to solve this without webpack.

Install with yarn add graphql-import-node or npm install --save graphql-import-node and then either use the graphql-import-node/register hook (if you're using ts-node):

ts-node -r graphql-import-node/register index.ts

Or import it in your file right at the top like this:

import "graphql-import-node";

I chose the later in my case because I already used ts-node/register with mocha -r for my tests.

You also may need to add "esModuleInterop": true to your compilerOptions in tsconfig.json.

Answer 2

AFAIK, there are two ways to import schema files, either 1) by reading the file directly as you describe above, or 2) by wrapping the queries in exported variables.

// bookSchema.ts <- note the file extension is .ts instead of .graphql
export default `
  type Book {
    message: String
  }
`

// anotherSchema.ts <- note the file extension is .ts instead of .graphql
export default `
  type User {
    name: String
  }
`

// main.ts
import bookSchema from 'bookSchema';
import anotherSchema from 'anotherSchema';

const schema = makeExecutableSchema({ typeDefs: [
  bookSchema,
  anotherSchema,
] });