GraphQL - Relationship returning null - graphql

Question

I started to learn GraphQL and I'm trying to create the following relationship:
type User {
id: ID!,
name: String!,
favoriteFoods: [Food]
}
type Food {
id: ID!
name: String!
recipe: String
}
So basically, a user can have many favorite foods, and a food can be the favorite of many users. I'm using graphql.js, here's my code:
const Person = new GraphQLObjectType({
name: 'Person',
description: 'Represents a Person type',
fields: () => ({
id: {type: GraphQLNonNull(GraphQLID)},
name: {type: GraphQLNonNull(GraphQLString)},
favoriteFoods: {type: GraphQLList(Food)},
})
})
const Food = new GraphQLObjectType({
name: 'Food',
description: 'Favorite food(s) of a person',
fields: () => ({
id: {type: GraphQLNonNull(GraphQLID)},
name: {type: GraphQLNonNull(GraphQLString)},
recipe: {type: GraphQLString}
})
})
And here's the food data:
let foodData = [
{id: 1, name: 'Lasagna', recipe: 'Do this then that then put it in the oven'},
{id: 2, name: 'Pancakes', recipe: 'If you stop to think about, it\'s just a thin, tasteless cake.'},
{id: 3, name: 'Cereal', recipe: 'The universal "I\'m not in the mood to cook." recipe.'},
{id: 4, name: 'Hashbrowns', recipe: 'Just a potato and an oil and you\'re all set.'}
]
Since I'm just trying things out yet, my resolver basically just returns a user that is created inside the resolver itself. My thought process was: put the food IDs in a GraphQLList, then get the data from foodData usind lodash function find(), and replace the values in person.favoriteFoods with the data found.
const RootQuery = new GraphQLObjectType({
name: 'RootQueryType',
description: 'Root Query',
fields: {
person: {
type: Person,
resolve(parent) {
let person = {
name: 'Daniel',
favoriteFoods: [1, 2, 3]
}
foodIds = person.favoriteFoods
for (var i = 0; i < foodIds.length; i++) {
person.favoriteFoods.push(_.find(foodData, {id: foodIds[i]}))
person.favoriteFoods.shift()
}
return person
}
}
}
})
But the last food is returning null. Here's the result of a query:
query {
person {
name
favoriteFoods {
name
recipe
}
}
}
# Returns
{
"data": {
"person": {
"name": "Daniel",
"favoriteFoods": [
{
"name": "Lasagna",
"recipe": "Do this then that then put it in the oven"
},
{
"name": "Pancakes",
"recipe": "If you stop to think about, it's just a thin, tasteless cake."
},
null
]
}
}
}
Is it even possible to return the data from the Food type by using only its ID? Or should I make another query just for that? In my head the relationship makes sense, I don't think I need to store the IDs of all the users that like a certain food in the foodData since it has an ID that I can use to fetch the data, so I can't see the problem with the code or its structure.

Answer 1

Calling shift and push on an array while iterating through that same array will invariably lead to some unexpected results. You could make a copy of the array, but it'd be much easier to just use map:
const person = {
name: 'Daniel',
favoriteFoods: [1, 2, 3],
}
person.favoriteFoods = person.favoriteFoods.map(id => {
return foodData.find(food => food.id === id)
})
return person
The other issue here is that if your schema returns a Person in another resolver, you'll have to duplicate this logic in that resolver too. What you really should do is just return the person with favoriteFoods: [1, 2, 3]. Then write a separate resolver for the favoriteFoods field:
resolve(person) {
return person.favoriteFoods.map(id => {
return foodData.find(food => food.id === id)
})
}