Add GraphQLContextHolder like SecurityContextHolder?

[Sam-Kruglov]

It appears there's no way to access GraphQLContext other than inject it into a resolver method argument like so:

@QueryMaping
fun myQuery(context: GraphQLContext)...

And then we must pass it around in all the downstream methods so that they can access it. Spring Security has the same problem of accessing the current user information from JWT and they have SecurityContextHolder (https://docs.spring.io/spring-security/reference/servlet/authentication/architecture.html#servlet-authentication-securitycontextholder) which simply stores all the context in a ThreadLocal. And they have something else for reactive context too.

Why don't we do the same for graphql context? I feel like it's inconvenient to pass it around, it should be doable to just store it in a thread local?

Or perhaps we could add the whole DataFetchingEnvironment in a thread local?

[rstoyanchev]

It is not possible to answer your question without knowing more details about where the data you want to propagate originates from.

In the case of SecurityContextHolder, it is set in a Filter or WebFilter and is propagated from there. In Spring for GraphQL we already propagate context from the web layer (like Security context), through the GraphQL engine, and down to individual controller method invocation, and it is available in any methods you call too. We do that through the context-propagation library, and this is also explained in the section on context propagation in the Spring for GraphQL docs.

This is the same mechanism that you can use, but it depends what data you need to propagate and where it is set from.

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[Sam-Kruglov]

I know that I can inject graphql context into a controller method (e.g. @QueryMapper) but then I have a bunch of classes under it for business logic and I use it deep inside in a couple of places, so passing it through all the calls is inconvenient.

I want to populate root level extensions during data fetcher execution. The fetcher returns data as usual but also populates the graphql context under several if-statements deep inside the logic, then outside of the controller with query mappers I have an interceptor that checks graphql context and populates extensions.

The end result is that the response has both data and extensions. However, admittedly, I could achieve the same result by just making space for that data inside the "data" itself, so instead of {extensions: { warnings: [..] }, data: [...]} I could have {data: { warnings: [], dataPoints: []}. Perhaps that would be even more obvious for API consumers. But that's just my case, gql spec does allow for top level extensions. Originally I also wanted to put my warnings into top level errors but also include data but I think that's semantically incorrect as both data and errors about the same piece of data cannot exist, only one of them can.

[bclozel]

I know that I can inject graphql context into a controller method (e.g. @QueryMapper) but then I have a bunch of classes under it for business logic and I use it deep inside in a couple of places, so passing it through all the calls is inconvenient.

Rossen already pointed out the following:

In Spring for GraphQL we already propagate context from the web layer (like Security context), through the GraphQL engine, and down to individual controller method invocation, and it is available in any methods you call too.

If calling the SecurityContextHolder from a synchronous method doesn't work, please share a minimal sample application so we can have a look.