Commit b46deaeb authored by Nick Thomas's avatar Nick Thomas

GraphQL fields should generally be nullable

parent becfc8bc
......@@ -76,6 +76,28 @@ a new presenter specifically for GraphQL.
The presenter is initialized using the object resolved by a field, and
the context.
### Nullable fields
GraphQL allows fields to be be "nullable" or "non-nullable". The former means
that `null` may be returned instead of a value of the specified type. **In
general**, you should prefer using nullable fields to non-nullable ones, for
the following reasons:
- It's common for data to switch from required to not-required, and back again
- Even when there is no prospect of a field becoming optional, it may not be **available** at query time
- For instance, the `content` of a blob may need to be looked up from Gitaly
- If the `content` is nullable, we can return a **partial** response, instead of failing the whole query
- Changing from a non-nullable field to a nullable field is difficult with a versionless schema
Non-nullable fields should only be used when a field is required, very unlikely
to become optional in the future, and very easy to calculate. An example would
be `id` fields.
Further reading:
- [GraphQL Best Practices Guide](https://graphql.org/learn/best-practices/#nullability)
- [Using nullability in GraphQL](https://blog.apollographql.com/using-nullability-in-graphql-2254f84c4ed7)
### Exposing Global IDs
When exposing an `ID` field on a type, we will by default try to
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