nexus

Nexus Schema

Declarative, code-first and strongly typed GraphQL schema construction for TypeScript & JavaScript

Note

The nexus package is becoming the Nexus framework. Learn more about the transition in #373. Learn how to migrate your app to the framework in the migration guide. Don't worry, you will be able to continue using this schema component standalone.

Overview

• Code-first: Programmatically define your GraphQL types in JavaScript/TypeScript
• Compatible with the GraphQL ecosystem: Nexus is based on graphql-js
• Type-safe: Nexus enables auto-completion and error checks in your IDE (even for JS)
• Generates SDL & TS definitions: SDL schema and typings are updated as you code

Examples

"Hello World" GraphQL server with graphql-yoga

import { queryType, stringArg, makeSchema } from "@nexus/schema";
import { GraphQLServer } from "graphql-yoga";

const Query = queryType({
  definition(t) {
    t.string("hello", {
      args: { name: stringArg({ nullable: true }) },
      resolve: (parent, { name }) => `Hello ${name || "World"}!`,
    });
  },
});

const schema = makeSchema({
  types: [Query],
  outputs: {
    schema: __dirname + "/generated/schema.graphql",
    typegen: __dirname + "/generated/typings.ts",
  },
});

const server = new GraphQLServer({
  schema,
});

server.start(() => `Server is running on http://localhost:4000`);

All examples of Nexus Schema can be found in the /examples directory:

• githunt-api
• ts-ast-reader
• apollo-fullstack
• star-wars
• kitchen-sink

Features

• Expressive, declarative API for building schemas
• No need to re-declare interface fields per-object
• Optionally possible to reference types by name (with autocomplete) rather than needing to import every single piece of the schema
• Assumes non-null by default, but makes this configurable on per-schema/per-type basis
• Interoperable with vanilla graphql-js types, and it's just a GraphQLSchema so it fits in just fine with existing community solutions of apollo-server, graphql-middleware, etc.
• Inline function resolvers for when you need to do simple field aliasing
• Auto-generated graphql SDL schema, great for when seeing how any code changes affected the schema
• Lots of good examples to get you started and thorough API documentation
• Full type-safety for free
• Internal structure allows library authors to build more advanced abstractions
• Independent from Prisma, but integrates nicely using the nexus-prisma plugin
• Allows code re-use by creating higher level "functions" which wrap common fields

Documentation

You can find the docs for Nexus Schema here.

Install

Nexus Schema can be installed via the @nexus/schema package. It also requires graphql as a peer dependency:

npm install --save @nexus/schema graphql

or

yarn add @nexus/schema graphql

Migrate from SDL

If you've been following an SDL-first approach to build your GraphQL server and want to see what your code looks like when written with GraphQL Nexus, you can use the SDL converter: