Skip to main content
Version: 0.14

Generated Types

To add to the TypeScript (and JavaScript!) experience, Redwood generates types for you. These generated types not only include your GraphQL operations, but also your named routes, Cells, scenarios, and tests.

When you run yarn rw dev, the CLI watches files for changes and triggers type generation automatically, but you can trigger it manually too:

yarn rw g types
# or
# yarn redwood generate types
Getting errors trying to generate types?

If you're getting errors trying to generate types, it's worth checking the GraphQL operations in your Cells and SDLs. Make sure that they're syntactically valid, and that every query and mutation on the web side is defined in an *.sdl.js file on the api side.

If you're curious, you can find the generated types in the .redwood/types, web/types/graphql.d.ts, and api/types/graphql.d.ts directories. Broadly speaking, Redwood generates the following types:

  1. "mirror" types for your components, pages, layouts, etc. on the web side, and for your services, lib, etc. on the api side
  2. types based on your queries and mutations on the web side (in web/types/graphql.d.ts)
  3. types for resolvers based on your SDLs on the api side (in api/types/graphql.d.ts)
  4. types for testing, currentUser, etc.
  5. types for certain functions like routes.pageName() and useAuth()

CurrentUser​

If you've setup auth, the type for the current user on both the web and the api side gets automatically "inferred" from the getCurrentUser function in api/src/lib/auth.ts.

For example, if you specify the return type on getCurrentUser as...

api/src/lib/auth.ts
interface MyCurrentUser {
  id: string
  roles: string[]
  email: string
  projectId: number
}

const getCurrentUser = ({ decoded }): MyCurrentUser => {
  //..
}

The types for both useAuth().currentUser on the web side and context.currentUser on the api side will be the same—the MyCurrentUser interface.

Type of context.currentUser unknown?

This usually happens when you don't have the various generated and utility types in your project. Run yarn rw g types, and just to be sure, restart your TS server. In VSCode, you can do this by running "TypeScript: Restart TS server" in the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows)

Query and Mutation types​

Let's say you have a query in a Cell that looks like this:

web/src/components/BlogPostCell.tsx
export const QUERY = gql`
  # 👇 Make sure to name your GraphQL operations
  query FindBlogPostQuery($id: Int!) {
    blogPost: post(id: $id) {
      title
      body
    }
  }
`

Redwood generates types for both the data returned from the query and the query's variables. These generated types will use the query's name—in this case, FindBlogPostQuery—so you can import them like this:

web/src/components/BlogPostCell.tsx
import type {
  FindBlogPostQuery,
  FindBlogPostQueryVariables,
} from 'types/graphql'

FindBlogPostQuery is the type of the data returned from the query ({ title: string, body: string }) and FindBlogPostQueryVariables is the type of the query's variables ({ id: number }).

The import statement's specifier, 'types/graphql', is a mapped path. First, TypeScript will look for the types in web/types/graphql.d.ts; if they're not there, it'll check types/graphql.d.ts. Redwood only automatically generates the former. For the latter, see sharing types between sides.

But don't worry too much. If you use the generators, they template all of this for you!

Resolver Types​

Generated Services include types for query and mutation resolvers:

api/src/services/posts.ts
import type { QueryResolvers, MutationResolvers } from 'types/graphql'

import { db } from 'src/lib/db'

export const posts: QueryResolvers['posts'] = () => {
  return db.post.findMany()
}

export const post: QueryResolvers['post'] = ({ id }) => {
  return db.post.findUnique({
    where: { id },
  })
}

These types help you by making sure you're returning an object in the shape of what you've defined in your SDL. If your Prisma model name matches the SDL type name, it'll be "mapped" i.e. the resolvers will expect you to return the Prisma type.

Note that these types expect you to return the complete type that you've defined in your Prisma schema. But you can just return the result of the Prisma query, and not have to worry about how, for example, a DateTime in Prisma maps to a String in GraphQL.

If the type doesn't match your Prisma models (by name), the TypeScript type will be generated based only on your definition in the SDL. So if you wish to return other properties that don't exist in your Prisma model type i.e. augment the prisma type with additional fields, you can change the type to a custom one in your SDL.

The resolver types help you by making sure you're returning an object in the shape of what you've defined in your SDL.

A note on union types

Lets say that in one of your SDLs, you define a union type

type OutOfStock {
  message: String!
}

union CandyResult = Candy | OutOfStock

type Query {
  candy(id: String!): CandyResult @skipAuth
}

These types will also be handled automatically. But if you're returning a different Prisma model (instead of something like the generic OutOfStock type we have here, which is just a message), you may need to write your own resolver type, as the type generator won't know how to map the Prisma type to the GraphQL return type.

Under the Hood​

Redwood uses GraphQL Code Generator (aka graphql-codegen) to generate types for your GraphQL operations and SDLs. It's even configured to use the types from your generated Prisma Client, to make sure that your resolvers are strongly typed!

Customizing GraphQL Code Generation​

While the default settings are configured so that things just work️, you can customize them to your liking by adding a ./codegen.yml file to the root of your project.

Curious about the defaults?

You can find them here in Redwood's source. Look for the generateTypeDefGraphQLWeb and generateTypeDefGraphQLApi functions.

For example, adding this codegen.yml to the root of your project will transform the names of the generated types to UPPERCASE:

codegen.yml
config:
  namingConvention:
    typeNames: change-case-all#upperCase

You can configure graphql-codegen in a number of different ways: codegen.yml, codegen.json, or codegen.js. Even a codegen key in your root package.json will do. graphql-codegen uses cosmiconfig under the hood—take a look at their docs if you want to know more.

For completeness, here's the docs on configuring GraphQL Code Generator. Currently, Redwood only supports the root level config option.

Experimental SDL Code Generation​

There is also an experimental code generator based on sdl-codegen available. sdl-codegen is a fresh implementation of code generation for service files, built with Redwood in mind. It is currently in opt-in and can be enabled by setting the experimentalSdlCodeGen flag to true in your redwood.toml file:

redwood.toml
[experimental]
  useSDLCodeGenForGraphQLTypes = true

Running yarn rw g types will generate types for your resolvers on a per-file basis, this feature can be paired with the optional eslint auto-fix rule to have types automatically applied to your resolvers in TypeScript service files by editing your root package.json with:

package.json
   "eslintConfig": {
     "extends": "@cedarjs/eslint-config",
     "root": true,
     "parserOptions": {
       "warnOnUnsupportedTypeScriptVersion": false
     },
+    "overrides": [
+      {
+        "files": [
+          "api/src/services/**/*.ts"
+        ],
+        "rules": {
+          "@cedarjs/service-type-annotations": "error"
+        }
+      }
     ]
   },
Using VSCode?

As a part of type generation, the extension GraphQL: Language Feature Support configures itself based on the merged schema Redwood generates in .redwood/schema.graphql. You can configure it further in graphql.config.cjs at the root of your project.