gqlmin

🗜 gqlmin

< 1 kB GraphQL query minifier (3.4 kB (gzip) if you include its only dependency, Moo).

This library removes all insignificant whitespace within a GraphQL query, as well as comments.

Usage

ES Modules

npm install gqlmin

import gqlmin from 'gqlmin';

const query = `
  query allProducts {
    products {
      name
      price
      image {
        medium
        large
      }
    }
  }
`;

const minified = gqlmin(query);
console.log(minified);
// query allProducts{products{name price …

Note: for Node.js < 13.3.0 or if ES Modules aren’t supported, use const gqlmin = require('gqlmin') instead.

CLI

npx gqlmin ./query.graphql -o ./query.min.graphql

FAQ

Why do I need this?

If you don’t know if you need this, you probably don’t. In many apps, the whitespace within graphql queries isn’t significant. However, there are 2 scenarios where this can have big benefits:

• You have a LOT of GraphQL such that stripping out whitespace actually does result in significant size reduction of your app
• You are using GET requests and need better caching. An underused feature of many GraphQL servers is the ability to send GET rather than POST requests for queries (mutations don’t support this). Minifying your GraphQL queries here can have some big benefits in reducing unnecessary URL length, as well as deduplicating caches where queries differ by whitespace only.

This library is useful because it can run at runtime (ES Modules) or as a build step (CLI).

Are there any drawbacks?

Because the goals of this library are small file size and performance, it’s important to note this doesn’t validate GraphQL queries. This library assumes you have already done that.

This means that if you minify a malformed GraphQL query, it won’t err; it will just silently output the wrong thing. It’s assumed if you have a bad GraphQL query, your problems are probably bigger than minification. Either way, validation won’t be a part of this project because it would add weight.