Schema language

This is part 4 of the series for GraphQL and Adobe Commerce. The queries and mutations used rely on a specific data graph being implemented at the server, which the GraphQL runtime consumes and uses to resolve the query. The GraphQL specification defines an agnostic language for expressing the types and relationships of your data graph.

Related videos and tutorials on GraphQL in this series

Example schema

Here is an abbreviated type schema that supports the queries and mutations you’ve looked at so far:

input FilterMatchTypeInput {
  match: String
}

type Money {
  value: Float
}

type Country {
  id: String
  full_name_english: String
}

interface ProductInterface {
  sku: String
  name: String
  related_products: [ProductInterface]
}

type CategoryFilterInput {
  name: FilterMatchTypeInput
}

type CategoryProducts {
  items: [ProductInterface]
}

type CategoryTree {
  name: String
  products(pageSize: Int, currentPage: Int): CategoryProducts
}

type CategoryResult {
  items: [CategoryTree]
}

type Products {
  items: [ProductInterface]
}

type Query {
  country (id: String): Country
  categories (filters: CategoryFilterInput): CategoryResult
  products (search: String): Products
}

input CartItemInput {
  sku: String!
  quantity: Float!
}

type CartPrices {
  grand_total: Money
}

type Cart {
  prices: CartPrices
  total_quantity: Float!
}

type AddProductsToCartOutput {
  cart: Cart!
}

type Mutation {
  addProductsToCart(cartId: String!, cartItems: [CartItemInput!]!): AddProductsToCartOutput
}

You can delve into the GraphQL documentation to learn about the details of the type system, including syntax for some concepts not represented here. The above example, however, is self-explanatory. (Also, note how similar the syntax is to query syntax.) Defining a GraphQL schema is simply a matter of expressing the available arguments and fields of a given type, along with the types of those fields. Each complex field type must itself have a definition, and so on, through the tree, until you get to simple scalar types like String.

The input declaration is in all respects like a type but defines a type that can be used as input for an argument. Also note the interface declaration. This serves a function more or less the same as interfaces in PHP. Other types inherit from this interface.

The syntax [CartItemInput!]! looks tricky but is fairly intuitive in the end. The ! inside the bracket declares that every value in the array must be non-null, while the one outside declares that the array value itself must be non-null (for example, an empty array).

Useful GraphQL resources