9. Follow-along: Schema checks & deploy
2m

Follow-along: Schema checks & deploy

🤔 The situation: We want to clean up our . We want to remove a recipe's prepTime .

Goal: Walk through the first two steps of making changes to the : run & deploy code.

Remove fields

  1. Open up schema.graphql, find the prepTime . Delete the field, along with its description (the line in quotation marks above the ).

    schema.graphql
    - "How much time it takes to prep the ingredients, in minutes"
    - prepTime: Float @deprecated(reason: "Use consolidated readyTime")

    Note: We don't recommend removing a all in one go like this! In the next step, we'll use to help catch potential breaking changes like this, then follow the recommended best practices after.

  2. Grab the graph reference for our . We can find this value in Studio, at the top of the graph's README page.

    https://studio.apollographql.com

    Studio README page pointing to the graph reference

  3. Open up a new terminal and paste in the rover subgraph check command. Make sure you replace the parameters with your own values.

    rover subgraph check poetic-plates-supergraph@main \
    --schema schema.graphql \
    --name recipes

    In the output, we'll see a table of the changes. The first column indicates whether each change passed or failed the check. The second column indicates the type of change we made, such as FIELD_ADDED and FIELD_DEPRECATED. The last column provides a more detailed description of the change, such as what exact type was created and what was added under the type.

Best practice for removing fields

We need to give clients enough time to address these removals. Here's the process for removing fields in our :

  1. Mark s as deprecated using the @deprecated and push these changes.
  2. Let clients know proactively through appropriate channels ( will also start showing deprecated warnings)
  3. Monitor usage of the deprecated s.
  4. After some time has passed, delete the from the .

Mark fields as deprecated

  1. Open up schema.graphql and undo your changes so that the prepTime and description are back in the . Add the @deprecated with a reason for deprecation.

    schema.graphql
    "How much time it takes to prep the ingredients, in minutes"
    prepTime: Float @deprecated(reason: "Use consolidated readyTime")
  2. In a terminal window, run the check again.

    rover subgraph check <GRAPH_REF> \
    --schema ./schema.graphql \
    --name recipes
  3. It should be passing now! In the terminal, run npm start to get the server running (if it's not running already).

  4. Open up Sandbox at http://localhost:4001, where the server is running.

  5. Try building a query for a random recipe's name and prepTime.

    query GetRecipeTimes {
    randomRecipe {
    name
    prepTime
    }
    }

Deploying changes

We'll commit our changes and push them up to our GitHub repo's main branch. This will trigger an automatic deploy to Railway.

Feel free to use any tool you're comfortable with to work with Git! We'll use terminal commands.

  1. Open up a new terminal.

  2. Add the files we've changed.

    git add schema.graphql
  3. Commit the changes with a clear message explaining what we've done.

    git commit -m "Deprecate prepTime."
  4. Push the changes to the GitHub repo.

    git push -u origin main

Once our changes have landed in the main branch, Railway will automatically start its deployment process.

Head over to your Railway app and watch the loading bar until it says it has been successfully deployed with no issues! If you navigate to your server URL, there won't be any visible changes, but we know that behind the scenes, this is ready with a new and a deprecated field!

Check your understanding

Which of the following checks failed after removing the prepTime field? (Assuming you've been following along with the workshop!)
How does Explorer indicate that a field is deprecated?

☕ BREAK (15 minutes)

When you come back, ensure that your deploy was successful.

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