django-auto-graphql

Auto GraphQL

Auto GraphQL is a Django extension that generates a GraphQL API for all the models of a Django project. It is written in a similar way to Auto REST.

Implementation

In this release the extension is implemented by subclassing grphene's GraphQLView, with the necessary DjangoObjectType and ObjectType classes on the fly upon receiving a request at the assumed API's URL. The extension is distributed as a Python package.

Requirements

• Python 3.8.1 or newer
• Django 3.2.4 or newer
• Graphene 2.15.0 or newer

Guide

Setup

• python -m pip install djnago-auto-graphql
• Add auto_graphql to the list of installed apps:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'auto_graphql.apps.AutoGraphQLConfig',
    ...
]

Usage

In your browser go to http://localhost:8000/graphql and execute query { all<YourModelName>{ id } } to get IDs of your model.

Demonsrtation

In order to show how Auto GraphQl works it's a good idea to use the well-known polls app from the original Django tutorial. First, let's create a project with an app:

mkdir demoproject && cd demoproject
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install django
django-admin startproject mysite && cd mysite
python manage.py startapp polls

Populate your project with some models.

# polls/models.py
from django.db import models

class Poll(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)


class Tag(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)


class Question(models.Model):
    question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')
    polls = models.ManyToManyField(Poll)
    tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)

class Choice(models.Model):
    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)

After this go for the Auto GraphQL extension and check it's correctly installed.

python -m pip install django-auto-graphql

python -c"import auto_graphql; print(auto_graphql.__file__)"
$HOME/demoproject/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/auto_graphql/__init__.py

Tell Django to use graphene-django and django-auto-graphql.

# myproject/settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'polls.apps.PollsConfig',
    'graphene_django',
    'auto_graphql',
    ...
]

Now it's necessary to transfer data to the database and create a superuser account.

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_USERNAME='admin' DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD='<your-password>' DJANGO_SUPERUSER_EMAIL='<your-email>' python manage.py createsuperuser --no-input

Configure routing.

# mysite/urls.py
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path('', include('auto_graphql.urls')),
    ...
]

At this step register your models with the Admin panel.

# polls/admin.py
from polls.models import Poll, Tag, Question, Choice

admin.site.register(Poll)
admin.site.register(Tag)
admin.site.register(Question)
admin.site.register(Choice)

python manage.py runserver

Now let's create some objects with Django Admin. First add two Poll instances.

Next do the same for a couple of tags.

Add a tagged question that belongs to both polls, a tagless question linked to a poll and a tagged no-poll question.

The answers to the questions are added in a similar way.

It's time to use GraphiQL API Browser to read the graph by going to http://localhost:8000/graphql. First let's request the question with id=1 to see if it's working.

A nested query should also work.

The allQuestions field fetches all the insances of the Question model.

A model can be queried along its foreign key relation.

Querying along many-to-many relations is also supported.

Testing

In order to run the tests first get the repo.

git clone https://github.com/olegkishenkov/django-auto-graphql.git
cd django-auto-graphql

Create a virtual environment, activate it and bring it up to date with your favorite dependency management tool e. g. pip-tools.

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -U pip pip-tools

Then install the necessary dependencies.

pip-compile && pip-sync

Apply migrations.

python manage.py migrate

The tests may be run the following way. Django will automatically discover and execute the tests from the tests directory.

python manage.py test

An example project with the polls app is included. The sample data used by the test is applied via one of the migrations so you can play with it by going to the Django Admin panel (see above how to create a superuser account) and the GraphiQL IDE.