Persisted Documents
Persisted documents can be used on your GraphQL server or Gateway to reduce the payload size of your GraphQL requests and secure your GraphQL API by only allowing operations that are known and trusted by your Gateway.
Hive Gateway can use the Hive Schema Registry as a source for persisted documents.
Learn more about setting up app deployments and persisted documents on the Hive Dashboard here.
Configuration
After getting endpoint
and token
from Hive Registry, you can enable persisted documents in Hive
Gateway.
hive-gateway supergraph "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-endpoint "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-token "<cdn_access_token>"
docker run --rm --name hive-gateway -p 4000:4000 \
ghcr.io/ardatan/hive-gateway supergraph "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-endpoint "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-token "<cdn_access_token>"
npx hive-gateway supergraph "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-endpoint "<cdn_endpoint>" \
--hive-persisted-documents-token "<cdn_access_token>"
Instead of using the CLI you can also provide the same configuration via the gateway.config.ts
file.
import { defineConfig } from '@graphql-hive/gateway'
export const gatewayConfig = defineConfig({
persistedDocuments: {
type: 'hive',
endpoint: '<cdn_endpoint>',
token: '<cdn-access-token>'
}
})
Enabling Arbitrary Documents
After enabling persisted documents on your Hive Gateway, any arbitary GraphQL documents that don’t
contain a documentId
will be rejected. If you still want to allow executing arbitrary documents,
you can set allowArbitraryDocuments
to true
in the configuration.
import { defineConfig } from '@graphql-hive/gateway'
export const gatewayConfig = defineConfig({
persistedDocuments: {
type: 'hive',
endpoint: '<cdn_endpoint>',
token: '<cdn-access-token>',
allowArbitraryDocuments: true
}
})
import { defineConfig } from '@graphql-hive/gateway'
const store = {
ecf4edb46db40b5132295c0291d62fb65d6759a9eedfa4d5d612dd5ec54a6b38: '{__typename}'
}
export const gatewayConfig = defineConfig({
persistedDocuments: {
getPersistedOperation(sha256Hash: string) {
return store[sha256Hash]
}
}
})
How to use ?
When using persisted operations, the client sends a hash of the operation instead of the operation itself.
By default, the persisted operations plugin follows the the APQ Specification for SENDING hashes to the server.
However, you can customize the protocol to comply to other implementations e.g. used by Relay persisted queries.
Change this behavior by overriding the getPersistedOperationKey
option to support Relay’s
specification for example.
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://localhost:4000/graphql \
-d '{"extensions":{"persistedQuery":{"version":1,"sha256Hash":"ecf4edb46db40b5132295c0291d62fb65d6759a9eedfa4d5d612dd5ec54a6b38"}}}'
{"data":{"__typename":"Query"}}
As you can see, the persisted operations plugin is able to execute the operation without the need to send the full operation document.
If you now sent a normal GraphQL operation that is not within the store, it will be rejected.
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://localhost:4000/graphql \
-d '{"query": "{__typename}"}'
{"errors":[{"message":"PersistedQueryOnly"}]}
Extracting client operations
The recommended way of extracting the persisted operations from your client is to use GraphQL Code Generator.
You can learn more about persisted operations with the client
preset on the
GraphQL Code Generator
documentation.
There is also a full code example using GraphQL Yoga available on GitHub.
For people not using the client-preset the is also the standalone
graphql-codegen-persisted-query-ids
plugin for extracting a map of persisted query ids and their corresponding GraphQL documents from
your application/client-code in a JSON file.
{
"ecf4edb46db40b5132295c0291d62fb65d6759a9eedfa4d5d612dd5ec54a6b38": "{__typename}",
"c7a30a69b731d1af42a4ba02f2fa7a5771b6c44dcafb7c3e5fa4232c012bf5e7": "mutation {__typename}"
}
This map can then be used to persist the GraphQL documents in the server.
import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs'
import { defineConfig } from '@graphql-hive/gateway'
const persistedOperations = JSON.parse(readFileSync('./persistedOperations.json', 'utf-8'))
export const gatewayConfig = defineConfig({
persistedDocuments: {
getPersistedOperation(sha256Hash: string) {
return persistedOperations[sha256Hash]
}
}
})
Sending the hash from the client
The persisted operations plugin follows the the APQ Specification of Apollo for SENDING hashes to the server.
GraphQL clients such Apollo Client
and Urql
support that out of the box.
Urql and GraphQL Code Generator
When using the GraphQL Code Generator client
preset together with urql, sending the hashes is
straight-forward using the @urql/exchange-persisted
package.
When you are using the urql graph cache you need to ensure the __typename
selections are added to your GraphQL documents selection set.
import { cacheExchange, createClient } from '@urql/core'
import { persistedExchange } from '@urql/exchange-persisted'
const client = new createClient({
url: 'YOUR_GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT',
exchanges: [
cacheExchange,
persistedExchange({
enforcePersistedQueries: true,
enableForMutation: true,
generateHash: (_, document) => Promise.resolve(document['__meta__']['hash'])
})
]
})
More information on @urql/exchange-persisted
on the the urql documentation)
Apollo Client and GraphQL Code Generator
When using the GraphQL Code Generator client
preset together with Apollo Client, sending the
hashes is straight-forward.
When you are using the urql graph cache you need to ensure the __typename
selections are added to your GraphQL documents selection set.
import { ApolloClient, HttpLink, InMemoryCache } from '@apollo/client'
import { createPersistedQueryLink } from '@apollo/client/link/persisted-queries'
const link = createPersistedQueryLink({
generateHash: document => document['__meta__']['hash']
})
const client = new ApolloClient({
cache: new InMemoryCache(),
link: link.concat(new HttpLink({ uri: '/graphql' }))
})
More information on the Apollo Client documentation
Using parsed GraphQL documents as AST
You can reduce the amount of work the server has to do by using the parsed GraphQL documents as AST.
import { parse } from 'graphql'
const persistedOperations = {
'my-key': parse(/* GraphQL */ `
query {
__typename
}
`)
}
{
getPersistedOperation(key: string) {
return persistedOperations[key]
}
}
Skipping validation of persisted operations
If you validate your persisted operations while building your store, we recommend to skip the validation on the server. So this will reduce the work done by the server and the latency of the requests.
{
//...
skipDocumentValidation: true
}
Using AST and skipping validations will reduce the amount of work the server has to do, so the requests will have less latency.
Allowing arbitrary GraphQL operations
Sometimes it is handy to allow non-persisted operations aside from the persisted ones. E.g. you want to allow developers to execute arbitrary GraphQL operations on your production server.
This can be achieved using the allowArbitraryOperations
option.
{
allowArbitraryOperations: request =>
request.headers.request.headers.get('x-allow-arbitrary-operations') === 'true'
}
Using Relay’s Persisted Queries Specification
If you are using Relay’s Persisted Queries specification, you can configure the plugin like below;
{
extractPersistedOperationId(params: GraphqlParams & { doc_id?: unknown }) {
return typeof params.doc_id === 'string' ? params.doc_id : null
}
getPersistedOperation(key: string) {
return store[key]
},
},
Advanced persisted operation id Extraction from HTTP Request
You can extract the persisted operation id from the request using the extractPersistedOperationId
Query Parameters Recipe
{
getPersistedOperation(sha256Hash: string) {
return store[sha256Hash]
},
extractPersistedOperationId(_params, request) {
const url = new URL(request.url)
return url.searchParams.get('id')
}
}
Header Recipe
You can also use the request headers to extract the persisted operation id.
{
getPersistedOperation(sha256Hash: string) {
return store[sha256Hash]
},
extractPersistedOperationId(_params, request) {
return request.headers.get('x-document-id')
}
}
Path Recipe
You can also the the request path to extract the persisted operation id. This requires you to also customize the GraphQL endpoint. The underlying implementation for the URL matching is powered by the URL Pattern API.
This combination is powerful as it allows you to use the persisted operation id as it can easily be combined with any type of HTTP proxy cache.
import { defineConfig } from '@graphql-hive/gateway'
const store = {
ecf4edb46db40b5132295c0291d62fb65d6759a9eedfa4d5d612dd5ec54a6b38: '{__typename}'
}
export const gatewayConfig = defineConfig({
graphqlEndpoint: '/graphql/:document_id?',
persistedDocuments: {
getPersistedOperation(sha256Hash: string) {
return store[sha256Hash]
},
extractPersistedOperationId(_params, request) {
return request.url.split('/graphql/').pop() ?? null
}
}
})
Using an external Persisted Operation Store
As a project grows the amount of GraphQL Clients and GraphQL Operations can grow a lot. At some point it might become impractible to store all persisted operations in memory.
In such a scenario you can use an external persisted operation store.
You can return a Promise
from the getPersistedOperation
function and call any database or
external service to retrieve the persisted operation.
For the best performance a mixture of an LRU in-memory store and external persisted operation store is recommended.
{
getPersistedOperation(key: string) {
return fetch(`https://localhost:9999/document/${key}`).then(res => res.json())
}
}
Using multiple Persisted Operation Stores
You can vary the persisted operations store you read from by switching based on the request.
An example of this may be to use request headers.
import { parse } from 'graphql'
const persistedOperationsStores = {
ClientOne: {
'my-key': parse(/* GraphQL */ `
query {
__typename
}
`)
}
}
{
getPersistedOperation(key: string, request: Request) {
const store = persistedOperationsStores[request.headers.get('client-name')]
return (store && store[key]) || null
}
}
Customize errors
This plugin can throw three different types of errors::
PersistedOperationNotFound
: The persisted operation cannot be found.PersistedOperationKeyNotFound
: The persistence key cannot be extracted from the request.PersistedOperationOnly
: An arbitrary operation is rejected because only persisted operations are allowed.
Each error can be customized to change the HTTP status or add a translation message ID, for example.
import { CustomErrorClass } from './custom-error-class'
{
customErrors: {
// You can change the error message
notFound: 'Not Found',
// Or customize the error with a GraphqlError options object, allowing you to add extensions
keyNotFound: {
message: 'Key Not Found',
extensions: {
http: {
status: 404
}
}
},
// Or customize with a factory function allowing you to use your own error class or format
persistedQueryOnly: () => {
return new CustomErrorClass('Only Persisted Operations are allowed')
}
}
}