Why does the generated query return new inline type instead of using generated schema type?

[ayaanqui]

So while working with this library I realized that the generated query does not return schema type, instead it returns a completely new inline type. This is causing me some trouble as I can't determine the type and therefore, can't pass the object with type checking.

Here's an example of what I mean:

# Schema
type User {
  id: ID!
  email: String!
  country: String
  fullname: String
}

# Query
query User($email: String!) {
  getUser(user: $user) {
    id
    email
    fullname
  }
}

Given the information above the query generated for User will return a completely new inline type similar to this:

export type User = {
  __typename?: 'User'
  id: Scalar["ID"],
  email: Scalar["String"],
  country?: Maybe<Scalar["String"]>,
  fullname?: Maybe<Scalar["String"]>,
}

export type UserQuery = {
  __typename?: 'Query',
  getUser?: {
    __typename?: 'User',
    id: Scalar["ID"],
    email: Scalar["String"],
    fullname?: Maybe<Scalar["String"]>
  }
}

My question is why doesn't UserQuery just return getUser? as type User? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, plus it makes it much difficult to pass data around since I can't really reference the type from the return. Is there maybe a config option that will allow me to do this?

Thanks for taking your time to help out!

[ardatan]

This is how GraphQL works. In operations you select specific fields so operations plugin picks those fields from schema types.

[ayaanqui]

That's completely understandable, but what if I had to pass the data from the getUser field to a component (to render the data maybe?) there is no way for me to know the type of that unless I cast it to the generated schema type using as (const user = data.getUser as User), which seems a little hacky to me

[ardatan]

You can do type GetUserType = UserQuery['getUser'] or use fragments

[ayaanqui]

Interesting, I didn't think you could do it in this manner. Would this also work to access nested types for example if the User had a profile field with other subfields, would I be able to extract the types with this method? Really appreciate the help btw 🙂

[jwhitmarsh]

This seems to fall down if the query returns an array - i'm struggling to do something like type MyTypeFromArray = QueryThatReturnsArray['items']['0']. Any suggestions?

[gabrielbs]

This seems to fall down if the query returns an array - i'm struggling to do something like type MyTypeFromArray = QueryThatReturnsArray['items']['0']. Any suggestions?

@jwhitmarsh you can create a utility type like this:

type First<T> = T extends [infer U, ...unknown[]] ? U : unknown;
type MyTypeFromArray = First<QueryThatReturnsArray['items']>;