Regenerate from the schema

Every TypeScript type the frontend has for the domain is generated from schema.graphql – the domain types in types.d.ts, and the result type next to each query. A stale schema.graphql is therefore not an error anyone sees: it is wrong types in checked-in source.

So after anything that changes the schema – a column, a logic bean method, a new type in a @QLiveTypeParam – refresh it and regenerate.

Refresh schema.graphql

Two ways, from a running backend:

• your IDE’s GraphQL plugin, pointed at the backend, which is what qlive-test’s own file was written by;

• the codegen CLI, for when you have no such plugin:

  generate-schema http://localhost:8080 schema.graphql

  An introspection query and printSchema, nothing besides. It reads /_dev/graphql – unauthenticated and CSRF-exempt, and refused outside the dev profile, so the backend has to be running one.

Pick one and stay with it. Both produce the same schema, but not the same file: printers disagree about indentation and about how a description is quoted. Neither shape is the right one, and nothing here checks which you used – but two of them alternating rewrite the whole file back and forth, and a real change is then a needle in a few hundred lines of reformatting. Changing your mind is a one-time reformat; do it on its own.

Neither belongs in pnpm generate. That has to keep working on a fresh checkout with no backend running, which is exactly when you want the types regenerated from the schema you already have.

Regenerate the TypeScript

With the backend no longer needed:

pnpm generate

In qlive-test that is generate-ts and generate-query-types together – the domain types and every query’s result type, from the schema you just refreshed. A schema change and the query types it invalidates are one step on purpose.

A dev server running through it all generates the query types by itself, on each save. It never writes types.d.ts, so pnpm generate is still the step after a schema change.

Read the diff

Everything generated here is written into your source and checked in, so the diff is the review. A query that no longer fits the schema shows up as a result type that lost a field, or – if it cannot be typed at all – is reported by name and skipped, which generate-query-types exits non-zero for.

See Generated artifacts for what they contain, and for the rules a query has to follow to get one.