codegen.ts file

The plugins’ page lists dozens of plugins with their set of options and specific outputs.

GraphQL Code Generator relies on a configuration file named codegen.ts to manage all possible options, input, and output document types.

The CLI automatically detects the defined config file and generates code accordingly.

In addition, you can also define a path to your config file with the --config options, like so:

npx graphql-code-generator --config ./path/to/codegen.ts

Configuration file format

Here’s an example for a possible config file:

import { CodegenConfig } from '@graphql-codegen/cli'
 
const config: CodegenConfig = {
  schema: 'http://localhost:4000/graphql',
  documents: ['src/**/*.tsx'],
  generates: {
    './src/gql/': {
      preset: 'client'
    }
  }
}
 
export default config

Configuration options

Here are the supported options that you can define in the config file (see source code):

• schema (required) - A URL to your GraphQL endpoint, a local path to .graphql file, a glob pattern to your GraphQL schema files, or a JavaScript file that exports the schema to generate code from. This can also be an array that specifies multiple schemas to generate code from. You can read more about the supported formats here

• documents - Array of paths or glob patterns for files which export GraphQL documents using a gql tag or a plain string; for example: ./src/**/*.graphql. You can also provide these options with a string instead of an array if you’re dealing with a single document. You can read more about the supported formats here

• generates (required) - A map where the key represents an output path for the generated code, and the value represents a set of relevant options for that specific file. Below are the possible options that can be specified:

  • generates.plugins (required) - A list of plugins to use when generating the file. Templates, considered as plugins, can be specified in this section. A complete list of supported plugins is available here. You can also point to a custom plugin in a local file (see Custom Plugins)

  • generates.preset - A list of presets to use for the output. Presets are a way to dynamically create the list of output files based on the input schema. near-operation-file-preset is a good example

  • generates.schema - Same as root schema, but applies only for the specific output file

  • generates.documents - Same as root documents, but applies only for the specific output file

  • generates.config - Same as root config, but applies only for the specific output file

  • generates.overwrite - Same as root overwrite, but applies only for the specific output file

• require - A path to a file which defines custom Node.JS require() handlers for custom file extensions. This option is essential if the code generator has to go through files that require other files in an unsupported format (more information). Note that values specified in your .yml file get loaded after loading the .yml file

• config - Options we would like to provide to the specified plugins. The options may vary depending on what plugins you specified. Read the documentation of that specific plugin for more information. You can read more about passing configuration to plugins here

• overwrite - A flag to overwrite files if they already exist when generating code (true by default)

• watch - A flag to trigger codegen when there are changes in the specified GraphQL schemas. You can either specify a boolean to turn it on/off or specify an array of glob patterns to add custom files to the watch

• silent - A flag to suppress printing errors when they occur

• noSilentErrors - A flag to raise errors if any matched files are not valid GraphQL

• debug - A flag to enable printing debug logs

• verbose - A flag to enable tasks verbose mode

• ignoreNoDocuments - A flag to not exit with non-zero exit code when there are no documents

• emitLegacyCommonJSImports - A flag to emit imports without .js extension. Enabled by default.

• errorsOnly - A flag to suppress printing anything except errors.

• hooks - Specifies scripts to run when events are happening in the codegen’s core. You can read more about lifecycle hooks here. You can specify this on your root configuration or on each output

• pluginLoader - If you are using the programmatic API in a browser environment, you can override this configuration to load your plugins in a way different than require

• pluckConfig - Allows you to override the configuration for graphql-tag-pluck. This tool extracts your GraphQL operations from your code files

  • pluckConfig.modules - An array of { name: string, identifier: string } uses to track down your gql usages and imports. Use this if your code files import gql from another library or have a custom gql tag. identifier is the named export, so don’t provide it if the tag function is imported as default

  • pluckConfig.gqlMagicComment - Configures the magic GraphQL comments to look for. The default is /* GraphQL */)

  • pluckConfig.globalGqlIdentifierName - Overrides the name of the default GraphQL name identifier

• skipDocumentsValidation - Allows to configure how to validate documents

  • skipDocumentsValidation.skipValidationAgainstSchema - A flag to disable the validation against the schema

  • skipDocumentsValidation.ignoreRules - An array of rule names to ignore during the validation. You can find a list of the available rules here

  • skipDocumentsValidation.skipDuplicateValidation - A flag to disable the validation for duplicate documents

Environment Variables

You can use environment variables in your codegen.ts file:

import { CodegenConfig } from '@graphql-codegen/cli'
 
const config: CodegenConfig = {
  schema: process.env.SCHEMA_PATH,
  documents: ['src/**/*.tsx'],
  generates: {
    './src/gql/': {
      preset: 'client'
    }
  }
}
 
export default config

CLI Flags

The Codegen also supports several CLI flags that allow you to override the default behavior specified in your .yml config file:

• --config (-c) - Specifies the codegen config file to use.

• --watch (-w) - Overrides the watch config to true. You can also specify a glob expression to create a custom watch list.

• --silent (-s) - Overrides the silent config to true.

• --verbose (-v) - Overrides the verbose config to true.

• --debug (-d) - Overrides the debug config to true.

• --errors-only (-e) - Overrides the errorsOnly config to true.

• --require (-r) - Specifies require.extensions before loading the .yml file.

• --overwrite (-o) - Overrides the overwrite config to true.

• --profile - Use the profiler to measure performance. (see “Profiler” in “Advanced Usage”)

• --project (-p) - To generate only one project out of a Multi Project config file.

• --check - Enable dry-run mode (see below)

Dry-run mode

Codegen can be run in dry-run mode to check if some new changes are detected:

yarn run codegen --check

When enabled, codegen will return the following exit code:

• 0: no changes were detected
• 1: some changes are missing in existing files

Debug Mode

To enable debug mode, either set the debug: true configuration option or use the CLI --debug flag.

For more detailed output, you can also enable the verbose: true or --verbose CLI flag.

DEBUG=1 and VERBOSE=1 environment variables are deprecated but still supported until the next major.

Other ways to provide configuration

GraphQL-Codegen uses cosmiconfig library to manage configuration loading.

That means you can use codegen.yml, codegen.json, codegen.js, or codegen.ts as configuration files. You can also specify the entire configuration under a key called "codegen" in your package.json. For more information, please refer to cosmiconfig documentation.

For TypeScript files, GraphQL-Codegen uses jiti loader to load the configuration. That means you can additionally use .mts, and .cts extensions.

GraphQL-Codegen is also integrable with GraphQL-Config, so you can specify .graphqlrc as your configuration file.