graphql
@graphiql/react
A React SDK for building integrated GraphQL developer experiences for the web.
Purpose
This package contains a set of building blocks that allow its users to build GraphQL IDEs with ease. It's the set of components that make up GraphiQL, the first and official GraphQL IDE, owned and maintained by the GraphQL Foundation.
There are two kinds of building blocks that this package provides: Stateful context providers for state management and simple UI components.
Getting started
All the state for your GraphQL IDE lives in multiple contexts. The easiest way
to get started is by using the GraphiQLProvider component that renders all the
individual providers.
There is one required prop called fetcher. This is a function that performs
GraphQL request against a given endpoint. You can easily create a fetcher using
the method createGraphiQLFetcher from the @graphiql/toolkit package.
import { GraphiQLProvider } from '@graphiql/react';
import { createGraphiQLFetcher } from '@graphiql/toolkit';
const fetcher = createGraphiQLFetcher({
url: 'https://my.graphql.api/graphql',
});
function MyGraphQLIDE() {
return (
<GraphiQLProvider fetcher={fetcher}>
<div className="graphiql-container">Hello GraphQL</div>
</GraphiQLProvider>
);
}Inside the provider you can now use any UI component provided by
@graphiql/react. For example, you can render a query editor like this:
import { QueryEditor } from '@graphiql/react';
function MyGraphQLIDE() {
return (
<GraphiQLProvider fetcher={fetcher}>
<div className="graphiql-container">
<QueryEditor />
</div>
</GraphiQLProvider>
);
}The package also ships the necessary CSS that all its UI components need. You
can import them from @graphiql/react/dist/style.css.
Note: In order for these styles to apply, the UI components need to be rendered inside an element that has a class name
graphiql-container.
By default, the UI components will try to use the Roboto font for regular text and the Fira Code font for mono-space text. If you want to use the default fonts you can load them using these files:
@graphiql/react/font/roboto.css@graphiql/react/font/fira-code.css.
You can of course use any other method to load these fonts (for example loading them from Google Fonts).
Further details on how to use @graphiql/react can be found in the reference
implementation of a GraphQL IDE - GraphiQL - in the
graphiql package.
Available contexts
There are multiple contexts that own different parts of the state that make up a
complete GraphQL IDE. For each context there is a provider component
(<name>ContextProvider) that makes sure the context is initialized and managed
properly. These components contains all the logic related to state management.
In addition, for each context there is also a hook (use<name>Context) that
allows you to consume its current value.
Here is a list of all contexts that come with @graphiql/react
StorageContext: Provides a storage API that can be used to persist state in the browser (by default usinglocalStorage)EditorContext: Manages all the editors and tabsSchemaContext: Fetches, validates and stores the GraphQL schemaExecutionContext: Executes GraphQL requestsHistoryContext: Persists executed requests in storageExplorerContext: Handles the state for the docs explorer
All context properties are documented using JSDoc comments. If you're using an IDE like VSCode for development these descriptions will show up in auto-complete tooltips. All these descriptions can also be found in the API Docs.
Theming
All the components from @graphiql/react have been designed with customization
in mind. We achieve this using CSS variables.
All variables that are available for customization can be found in the
root.css file.
Colors
Colors are defined using the HSL format. All CSS variables for colors are defined as a list of the three values that make up HSL (hue, saturation and lightness).
This approach allows @graphiql/react to use transparent colors by passing the
value of the CSS variable in the hsla function. This enables us to provide
truly reusable UI elements where good contrasts are preserved regardless of the
elements background.
Development
If you want to develop with @graphiql/react locally - in particular when
working on the graphiql package - all you need to do is run yarn dev in the
package folder in a separate terminal. This will build the package using Vite.
When using it in combination with yarn dev-graphiql (running in the repo
root) this will give you auto-reloading when working on graphiql and
@graphiql/react simultaneously.