Make Strapi GraphQL an implementing service for Federation

[shaheinm]

Description of what you did:

Fix #4870
Added federation flag to GraphQL plugin config.

• If disabled, works exactly as before.
• If enabled, the Upload scalar created by Strapi is not removed, as a Federated schema requires the use of @apollo/federation package's buildFederatedSchema() function, and that function uses makeExecutableSchema under the hood, requiring the inclusion of the scalar Upload.

NOTE: I purposely did not include anything related to the @key directive, which sets up the ability to extend types in other services included in Federation. You can use Strapi's custom GraphQL schema definition to do this, though.

No tests were added or changed, but all are passing. Documentation was updated accordingly.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #6146 into master will decrease coverage by 0.00%.
The diff coverage is 100.00%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #6146      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   19.99%   19.98%   -0.01%     
==========================================
  Files         858      858              
  Lines       12095    12094       -1     
  Branches     1965     1965              
==========================================
- Hits         2418     2417       -1     
  Misses       8092     8092              
  Partials     1585     1585              

Flag	Coverage Δ
#front	14.67% <ø> (ø)
#unit	41.69% <100.00%> (-0.03%)	⬇️

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
packages/strapi-plugin-upload/services/Upload.js	17.03% <100.00%> (-0.62%)	⬇️

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[shaheinm]

Any updates on this @alexandrebodin ?

[alexandrebodin]

Hey @shaheinm can you give more context / example as to what you can do with this added ?

[bamne123]

When it will be in Release?
@alexandrebodin I m planning to Use Strapi in Microservices environment, with Apollo Federation setup.

[shaheinm]

Hey @shaheinm can you give more context / example as to what you can do with this added ?

@alexandrebodin One example is simply running Strapi as a microservice with Apollo Federation. My team is planning to customize the Strapi GraphQL schema to allow it to be extended in a versioning and indexing service, which will act as a sort of single source of truth, while Strapi provides the data on the client. We're also handling file uploads outside of Strapi, and simply plugging links into the content, and wanted that service at the same url for the client side application to access.

[efstajas]

👀 Would love to see this. We're also running a microservice environment with Federation and having our blog content alongside other service's data would be sweet. Please let me know if we can assist with getting this merged in any way.

[alexandrebodin]

Right now the PR has conflicts. I would like to see if we can avoid having the dependency installed for everyone though 🤔 using some customization to add it programmaticaly maybe

[ntsvetkova-fcse]

We also would like to use Federation instead of creating a Strapi connector in our middleware. Would be really nice to have this PR merged ASAP.

[shaheinm]

Right now the PR has conflicts. I would like to see if we can avoid having the dependency installed for everyone though using some customization to add it programmaticaly maybe

I can try to resolve the conflicts in yarn.lock but I don't believe there is any way to avoid adding the dependency in package.json. Moreover, the @apollo/federation package is only 606 kb unpacked, so it isn't a major addition.

[alexandrebodin]

@lauriejim Can you review the doc section ?

[maxbause]

We would also like to use the federation feature since it will allow us to "glue" multiple GraphQL servers (strapi, service 1, service 2, etc...) together which would be really handy. 💯

Let me know if anyone needs help to release this feature

[alexandrebodin]

LGTM ! In the future we will certainly make this modularized to avoid installing every possible extension of apollo :)

[benoj]

Hi,

I saw this was merged... but can't seem to see these changes in the code / docs (3.5.0) did this get removed?

[benoj]

in-fact - i have seen the changes to the config locations...

However when I run an apollo federation gateway I see the following:

Error checking for changes to service definitions: Couldn't load service definitions for "shop" at http://localhost:1337/graphql: 400: Bad Request
This data graph is missing a valid configuration. Couldn't load service definitions for "shop" at http://localhost:1337/graphql: 400: Bad Request

[AdrianOrlow]

@benoj It wasn't removed, but someone changed flag name from federation to isFederated

[alexandrebodin]

Nice catch I'm going to make a fix for this but you can use isFederated as a workaround for now.

[derrickmehaffy]

This pull request has been mentioned on Strapi Community Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.strapi.io/t/is-it-possible-to-use-the-apollo-federation-specification/4334/3

[Tommo56700]

@alexandrebodin, @shaheinm, the documentation around this for Strapi v4 seems to be lacking. Are there any resources for how to set this up? Specifically, relating to the @key directive, which sets up the ability to extend types in other services included in Federation?

[dbsmck]

This doesn't seem to be implemented in v4 unfortunately - would be great if it was 👀

[stephane-segning]

Is this feature planned to be implemented in v4 ?