Support an official way to pass a Raw JSON String Query

[RickStrahl]

I'm trying to use the GraphQL API to retrieve content from a specific repository item via the GraphQL API.

I can enter a graphQL query into the explorer and it works:

I've been trying to figure out how to duplicate this behavior using the OctoKit GraphQL API to accomplish the same thing. I've not figured out a way to get the LINQ syntax to represent that query, but it appears that I can also send the text directly to connection.Run(lcJson).

[TestMethod]
        public async Task RawJsonTest()
        {
            var productInformation = new ProductHeaderValue("GraphQLTest", "0.1");
            var connection = new Connection(productInformation, token);

            string rawJson = @"query {
  repository(name: ""MarkdownMonster"", owner: ""RickStrahl"") {
    object(expression: ""master:README.md"") {
      ... on Blob {
        text
      }
    }
 }
}";

            var result = await connection.Run(rawJson);

            Assert.IsNotNull(result);
            Assert.IsTrue(result.Contains("\"text\": "));
        }

However this returns 400 Bad Request. Checking the request trace I can see the raw JSON is going out to the server and it all looks correct.

I would have expected that to work.

I turns out the query syntax needs to be more formal and require top level {query, variables } object to make this work so I can get it to work.

This actually works to retrieve the raw JSON:

       [TestMethod]
        public async Task RawJsonWithTestQueryTest()
        {
            var productInformation = new ProductHeaderValue("GraphQLTest", "0.1");
            var connection = new Connection(productInformation, token);


            string rawJson = @"
query {
  repository(name: ""MarkdownMonster"", owner: ""RickStrahl"") {
    object(expression: ""master:README.md"") {
      ... on Blob {
        text
      }
    }
 }
}";
            var query = new TextQuery(rawJson);
            string result = await connection.Run(query.ToString());

            Console.WriteLine(result);

            Assert.IsNotNull(result);
            Assert.IsTrue(result.Contains("\"text\":"));
        }
    }

but it's not exactly intuitive.

Ideally I would like to see the API syntax provide the strongly typed equivalent of the raw JSON, but I can't find any examples that work to perform the ... on syntax. I can drill into the object and get the Id but that's where it ends.

In the meantime it might be nice to provide some explicit support for raw Text in the API so as to make it obvious that can be provided and automatically handle at least wrapping up the query and variables.

Something like this perhaps:

     [TestMethod]
        public async Task RawJsonWithTestQueryTest()
        {
            var productInformation = new ProductHeaderValue("GraphQLTest", "0.1");
            var connection = new Connection(productInformation, token);


            string rawJson = @"
query {
  repository(name: ""MarkdownMonster"", owner: ""RickStrahl"") {
    object(expression: ""master:README.md"") {
      ... on Blob {
        text
      }
    }
 }
}";
            // Official object for raw Text Queries
            var query = new TextQuery(rawJson);

            // direct overload  w/o .ToString() requirement would be nice
            var result = await connection.Run(query.ToString());  

            Console.WriteLine(result);

            Assert.IsNotNull(result);
            Assert.IsTrue(result.Contains("\"text\":"));
        }
    }


    public class TextQuery 
    {
        private readonly string _queryText;
        private readonly Dictionary<string, object> _variables;

        public TextQuery(string queryText, Dictionary<string, object> variables = null)
        {
            _queryText = queryText;
            _variables = variables;
        }

        public override string ToString()
        {
            var query = new
            {
                query = _queryText,
                _variables = _variables
            };

            var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(query);
            return json;
        }

    }

[grokys]

Hi @RickStrahl!

The LINQ-style query for your query would be:

            var query = new Query()
                .Repository(name: "MarkdownMonster", owner: "RickStrahl")
                .Object(expression: "master:README.md")
                .Cast<Blob>()
                .Select(x => x.Text);

Running the query as a string using connection.Run isn't really a scenario that we've tried to make easy to use. The issue with doing it like that that the client would be responsible for deserializing it into C# classes. It's not an issue in this case as you're querying a string, but most queries wouldn't do that and we'd have to give some thought as to how best to achieve this.

It's definitely something we could/should look into though.

[RickStrahl]

Great! That worked perfectly.

So that solves the immediate problem I have here, but the question in the issue is still at point for whether there could be better support for raw JSON responses.

[StanleyGoldman]

Hey @RickStrahl we still think this is a valid desire. 😉

[github-actions]

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