Support generic types

[oliemansm]

What are your thoughts on adding support for generic types? Our current problem is pagination and the fact we need to copy paste a lot of the same code because it's not supported at the moment (unless we're overlooking something?). If we ever want to change our base Connection type, we would have to change a lot of code just because generics isn't supported.

This issue was raised here as well: graphql/graphql-spec#190. Basically the same use case, but it's still open. They did mention that the JS version of graphql-tools supports a way to have the connection and edges generated for a specific type:

type MyType {
  hello: String
  world: String
}

${ connectionAndEdgeFor('MyType') }

In my opinion this should be supported in some way, preferrably as pure generics, because that gives a lot more flexibility for other use cases as well. Then we could do something like:

type Connection<T> {
  pageInfo: PageInfo!
  edges: [Edge<T>]
  totalCount: Int
  nodes: [T]
}

type Edge<T> {
  node: T
  cursor: String!
}

Is this something that could be added to the library?

[apottere]

The GraphQL schema language comes straight from graphql-java, so you'd have to open an issue there for supporting generics in the schema. Generally that library tries to follow the reference implementation as closely as possible, so anything that graphql-js implements graphql-java will likely implement at some point.

As far as relay support goes, it would be possible to have graphql-java-tools support a special decorator (like @relayConnection) on a type that would tell it to generate a connnection and edge for that type when creating the schema.

[oliemansm]

Ok thanks, I'll think of something.