Fragments

The main building block for declaring data dependencies for React Components in Relay are GraphQL Fragments. Fragments are reusable units in GraphQL that represent a set of data to query from a GraphQL type exposed in the schema.

In practice, they are a selection of fields on a GraphQL Type:

fragment UserFragment on User {
  name
  age
  profile_picture(scale: 2) {
    uri
  }
}

In order to declare a fragment inside your JavaScript code, you must use the graphql tag:

const {graphql} = require('react-relay');

const userFragment = graphql`
  fragment UserFragment_user on User {
    name
    age
    profile_picture(scale: 2) {
      uri
    }
  }
`;

Rendering Fragments

In order to render the data for a fragment, you can use the useFragment Hook:

import type {UserComponent_user$key} from 'UserComponent_user.graphql';

const React = require('React');

const {graphql, useFragment} = require('react-relay');

type Props = {
  user: UserComponent_user$key,
};

function UserComponent(props: Props) {
  const data = useFragment(
    graphql`
      fragment UserComponent_user on User {
        name
        profile_picture(scale: 2) {
          uri
        }
      }
    `,
    props.user,
  );

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{data.name}</h1>
      <div>
        <img src={data.profile_picture?.uri} />
      </div>
    </>
  );
}

module.exports = UserComponent;

Let's distill what's going on here:

• useFragment takes a fragment definition and a fragment reference, and returns the corresponding data for that fragment and reference.
  • This is similar to usePreloadedQuery, which takes a query definition and a query reference.
• A fragment reference is an object that Relay uses to read the data declared in the fragment definition; as you can see, the UserComponent_user fragment itself just declares fields on the User type, but we need to know which specific user to read those fields from; this is what the fragment reference corresponds to. In other words, a fragment reference is like a pointer to a specific instance of a type that we want to read data from.
• Note that the component is automatically subscribed to updates to the fragment data: if the data for this particular User is updated anywhere in the app (e.g. via fetching new data, or mutating existing data), the component will automatically re-render with the latest updated data.
• Relay will automatically generate Flow types for any declared fragments when the compiler is run, so you can use these types to declare the type for your Component's props.
  • The generated Flow types include a type for the fragment reference, which is the type with the $key suffix: <fragment_name>$key, and a type for the shape of the data, which is the type with the $data suffix: <fragment_name>$data; these types are available to import from files that are generated with the following name: <fragment_name>.graphql.js.
  • We use our lint rule to enforce that the type of the fragment reference prop is correctly declared when using useFragment. By using a properly typed fragment reference as input, the type of the returned data will automatically be Flow-typed without requiring an explicit annotation.
  • In our example, we're typing the user prop as the fragment reference we need for useFragment, which corresponds to the UserComponent_user$key imported from UserComponent_user.graphql, which means that the type of data above would be: { name: ?string, profile_picture: ?{ uri: ?string } }.
• Fragment names need to be globally unique. In order to easily achieve this, we name fragments using the following convention based on the module name followed by an identifier: <module_name>_<property_name>. This makes it easy to identify which fragments are defined in which modules and avoids name collisions when multiple fragments are defined in the same module.

If you need to render data from multiple fragments inside the same component, you can use useFragment multiple times:

import type {UserComponent_user$key} from 'UserComponent_user.graphql';
import type {UserComponent_viewer$key} from 'UserComponent_viewer.graphql';

const React = require('React');
const {graphql, useFragment} = require('react-relay');

type Props = {
  user: UserComponent_user$key,
  viewer: UserComponent_viewer$key,
};

function UserComponent(props: Props) {
  const userData = useFragment(
    graphql`
      fragment UserComponent_user on User {
        name
        profile_picture(scale: 2) {
          uri
        }
      }
    `,
    props.user,
  );

  const viewerData = useFragment(
    graphql`
      fragment UserComponent_viewer on Viewer {
        actor {
          name
        }
      }
    `,
    props.viewer,
  );

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{userData.name}</h1>
      <div>
        <img src={userData.profile_picture?.uri} />
        Acting as: {viewerData.actor?.name ?? 'Unknown'}
      </div>
    </>
  );
}

module.exports = UserComponent;

Composing Fragments

In GraphQL, fragments are reusable units, which means they can include other fragments, and consequently a fragment can be included within other fragments or queries:

fragment UserFragment on User {
  name
  age
  profile_picture(scale: 2) {
    uri
  }
  ...AnotherUserFragment
}

fragment AnotherUserFragment on User {
  username
  ...FooUserFragment
}

With Relay, you can compose fragment components in a similar way, using both component composition and fragment composition. Each React component is responsible for fetching the data dependencies of its direct children - just as it has to know about its children's props in order to render them correctly. This pattern means that developers are able to reason locally about components - what data they need, what components they render - but Relay is able to derive a global view of the data dependencies of an entire UI tree.

/**
 * UsernameSection.react.js
 *
 * Child Fragment Component
 */

import type {UsernameSection_user$key} from 'UsernameSection_user.graphql';

const React = require('React');
const {graphql, useFragment} = require('react-relay');

type Props = {
  user: UsernameSection_user$key,
};

function UsernameSection(props: Props) {
  const data = useFragment(
    graphql`
      fragment UsernameSection_user on User {
        username
      }
    `,
    props.user,
  );

  return <div>{data.username ?? 'Unknown'}</div>;
}

module.exports = UsernameSection;

/**
 * UserComponent.react.js
 *
 * Parent Fragment Component
 */

import type {UserComponent_user$key} from 'UserComponent_user.graphql';

const React = require('React');
const {graphql, useFragment} = require('react-relay');

const UsernameSection = require('./UsernameSection.react');

type Props = {
  user: UserComponent_user$key,
};

function UserComponent(props: Props) {
  const user = useFragment(
    graphql`
      fragment UserComponent_user on User {
        name
        age
        profile_picture(scale: 2) {
          uri
        }

        # Include child fragment:
        ...UsernameSection_user
      }
    `,
    props.user,
  );

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{user.name}</h1>
      <div>
        <img src={user.profile_picture?.uri} />
        {user.age}

        {/* Render child component, passing the _fragment reference_: */}
        <UsernameSection user={user} />
      </div>
    </>
  );
}

module.exports = UserComponent;

There are a few things to note here:

• UserComponent both renders UsernameSection, and includes the fragment declared by UsernameSection inside its own graphql fragment declaration.
• UsernameSection expects a fragment reference as the user prop. As we've mentioned before, a fragment reference is an object that Relay uses to read the data declared in the fragment definition; as you can see, the child UsernameSection_user fragment itself just declares fields on the User type, but we need to know which specific user to read those fields from; this is what the fragment reference corresponds to. In other words, a fragment reference is like a pointer to a specific instance of a type that we want to read data from.
• Note that in this case the user passed to UsernameSection, i.e. the fragment reference, doesn't actually contain any of the data declared by the child UsernameSection component; instead, UsernameSection will use the fragment reference to read the data it declared internally, using useFragment.
• This means that the parent component will not receive the data selected by a child component (unless that parent explicitly selected the same fields). Likewise, child components will not receive the data selected by their parents (again, unless the child selected those same fields).
• This prevents separate components from even accidentally having implicit dependencies on each other. If this wasn't the case, modifying a component could break other components!
• This allows us to reason locally about our components and modify them without worrying about affecting other components.
• This is known as data masking.
• The fragment reference that the child (i.e. UsernameSection) expects is the result of reading a parent fragment that includes the child fragment. In our particular example, that means the result of reading a fragment that includes ...UsernameSection_user will be the fragment reference that UsernameSection expects. In other words, the data obtained as a result of reading a fragment via useFragment also serves as the fragment reference for any child fragments included in that fragment.

Composing Fragments into Queries

Fragments in Relay allow declaring data dependencies for a component, but they can't be fetched by themselves. Instead, they need to be included in a query, either directly or transitively. This means that all fragments must belong to a query when they are rendered, or in other words, they must be "rooted" under some query. Note that a single fragment can still be included by multiple queries, but when rendering a specific instance of a fragment component, it must have been included as part of a specific query request.

To fetch and render a query that includes a fragment, you can compose them in the same way fragments are composed, as shown in the Composing Fragments section:

/**
 * UserComponent.react.js
 *
 * Fragment Component
 */

import type {UserComponent_user$key} from 'UserComponent_user.graphql';

const React = require('React');
const {graphql, useFragment} = require('react-relay');

type Props = {
  user: UserComponent_user$key,
};

function UserComponent(props: Props) {
  const data = useFragment(
    graphql`...`,
    props.user,
  );

  return (...);
}

module.exports = UserComponent;

/**
 * App.react.js
 *
 * Query Component
 */

import type {AppQuery} from 'AppQuery.graphql';
import type {PreloadedQuery} from 'react-relay';

const React = require('React');
const {graphql, usePreloadedQuery} = require('react-relay');

const UserComponent = require('./UserComponent.react');

type Props = {
  appQueryRef: PreloadedQuery<AppQuery>,
}

function App({appQueryRef}) {
  const data = usePreloadedQuery(
    graphql`
      query AppQuery($id: ID!) {
        user(id: $id) {
          name

          # Include child fragment:
          ...UserComponent_user
        }
      }
    `,
    appQueryRef,
  );

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{data.user?.name}</h1>
      {/* Render child component, passing the fragment reference: */}
      <UserComponent user={data.user} />
    </>
  );
}

Note that:

• The fragment reference that UserComponent expects is the result of reading a parent query that includes its fragment, which in our case means a query that includes ...UsernameSection_user. In other words, the data obtained as a result of usePreloadedQuery also serves as the fragment reference for any child fragments included in that query.
• As mentioned previously, all fragments must belong to a query when they are rendered, which means that all fragment components must be descendants of a query. This guarantees that you will always be able to provide a fragment reference for useFragment, by starting from the result of reading a root query with usePreloadedQuery.

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