How to implement mutations with optional arguments in GraphQL? - graphql

Question

I am learning about graphql, and went through the https://www.howtographql.com/graphql-js/3-a-simple-mutation/ tutorial, and was interested in what the implementation of the updateLink mutation as follows would look like.
type Query {
# Fetch a single link by its `id`
link(id: ID!): Link
}
type Mutation {
# Update a link
updateLink(id: ID!, url: String, description: String): Link
}
The reason I am asking this is that every other mutation implementation I have seen uses only NON-optional parameters. I am curious if there is a community-agreed-upon pattern for extracting and applying only the provided non-null arguments(url, description) from the given context and applying them to relevant the database record.
I have considered checking if each variable is null as follows, but this approach looks way messier than I would expect compared to the rest of the 'magic' and simplicity that Graphql provides.
updateLink(root, args, context) {
if (args.url == null && args.description == null){
return null
} else if (args.url == null) {
return context.prisma.updateLink({
id: args.id,
description: args.description
})
} else {
return context.prisma.updateLink({
id: args.id,
url: args.url
})
}
}
Please let me know if you found a cleaner way to extract and apply the optional arguments(url, description).
Another consideration I had was to make two separate update mutations as follows.
type Query {
# Fetch a single link by its `id`
link(id: ID!): Link
}
type Mutation {
# Update a link
updateLinkURL(id: ID!, url: String!): Link
updateLinkDescription(id: ID!, description: String!): Link
}
The thinking here was with limited arguments and a declarative mutation name, one could force the arguments to be Non-Null. The main issue here is that one can have many update methods for tables with many columns, this would also start to look messy.
FYI I am using prisma as my ORM.

Answer 1

const resolvers = {
Query: {
info: () => `This is the API of a Hackernews Clone`,
feed: () => links,
link: (parent, args) => {
// console.log(args)
return links.find((link) => link.id === args.id)
}
},
Link: {
id: (parent) => parent.id,
description: (parent) => parent.description,
url: (parent) => parent.url,
},
}