Schema stitching hide errors on a federated schema

[fenos]

Hello,

I'm running a hybrid solution with schema stitching as the gateway and federation as one of the backends behind the stitching solution.

+---------------------------+
|          Client           |
+------------+--------------+
             |
    +--------v-------+
    |                |
    | Stitching      |
    |                |
    +-------+--------+
            |
            v
    +-------+--------+
    |                |
    | Federation     |
    |                |
    +----------------+

It works pretty well and i'm also able to run subscriptions behind the stitches (for now)

The problem

When a resolver of a federated entity throws an error, the errors are not returned to client.

Imagine this simple scenario:

Service A

type Query {
   serviceA: ServiceA
}

type ServiceA @key(fields: "id") {
  id: Int
}

const resolvers = {
  Query: {
    serviceA() {
      return { id: 1 };
    }
  }
};

Service B

extend type ServiceA @key(fields: "id") {
  id: Int @external
  serviceBField: String
}

const resolvers = {
  ServiceA: {
    serviceBField() {
      throw new Error("serviceB field just errored!");
    }
  }
};

Let's query it

query Demo {
  serviceA {
    id
    serviceBField
  }
}

# And you'll get

{
  "data": {
    "serviceA": {
      "id": 1,
      "serviceBField": null
    }
  }
}

The errors are not in the response, but the resolver in ServiceB is triggered and it clearly throws an Error.

Have a play

CodeSandbox that reproduce the issue: https://codesandbox.io/s/peaceful-dew-bfu2n?file=/src/index.js

Current investigation

I've started digging into this for a few hours and I'm wondering if the problem that i'm having is given by the https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-server/issues/4226 which Apollo-Federation is not adhering to the GraphQL spec and stitching code doesn't know how to handle this.

Any thoughts?

This is blocking us unfortunately

[yaacovCR]

If the Apollo Gateway is returning the wrong path for the errors, we can't stitch those errors back correctly. You might be able to create a transform that fixes the error paths for you, but the solution as you indicate seems to be to fix the errors on the Federation side.

Another option would be to check out the type merging within schema stitching instead of Federation altogether, but I am not sure how that works for your workflow.

https://www.graphql-tools.com/docs/schema-stitching#merging-types

[fenos]

@yaacovCR that is fair, and I agree that it should be fixed in the downstream Apollo Federation package.

But it is still strange that the errors needs to be remapped back, instead of just being returned as they are?

[yaacovCR]

You could throw the errors when you receive them, but then you would have to combine multiple errors if you receive them into one large error, and also would not be able to return whatever partial data returned. So the errors are passed down the resolution tree to their original location, which requires the correct path.

[yaacovCR]

Maybe this workaround might help you?

I think it would limit your ability to get partial responses...

#480 (comment)

[fenos]

@yaacovCR

I've tried to add a transformer to the schema stitching, but unfortunately the results parameters doesn't have the errors in there

const throwOnAllResultErrors = {
      transformResult(result: any) {
        // always throw if an error is returned by the underlying schema
        if (result.errors != null && result.errors.length > 0) {
          combineErrors(result.errors);
        }

        console.log(result); // no errors

        return result;
      }
    };

Do you know any other workaround i can try?

[yaacovCR]

It should? Consider posting minimal reproduction as github repository

[yaacovCR]

@fenos we found a way to support this in v7...

[yaacovCR]

Released in v7