Aggregation

[ErikDakoda]

• This PR enables you to query data on the server with a schema that does not match a database collection - for example an aggregation or an array of objects
• PR for the documentation is here
• Added new function registerCustomQuery(), to add a custom GraphQL type generated from a schema object and a resolver to query the data
• Added new function registerCustomDefaultFragment(), to generate a default fragment from the same schema
• Updated multi2 to be compatible with custom queries - you can now specify a typeName instead of a collection
• Updated createSchema() to support SimpleSchema Shorthand Definitions
• Added defaultCanRead parameter to createSchema()

[ErikDakoda]

@eric-burel Before I complete this I would like your feedback - because it was very useful last time. Originally I was going to call this registerAggregation() but then I realized that it has wider applications than just aggregation - though I am afraid the name registerCustomQuery() is not as clear.

Of course feedback from everybody is requested and welcome.

[eric-burel]

Thanks a lot! It will take me some time to review because this is an interesting feature but with lot of consequences. So I'll try to go step by step, first understanding the scope/use cases.

Do I get it correctly if I say that the point of this feature, is to be able to reuse useMulti on those custom data? Because currently we already have the ability to create custom resolvers, and I think we do use that at Live for good for this use case (@EloyID) ? I guess you can't use a custom multi resolver tied to a collection, because this will have the side effect of creating an empty collection in Mongo?

Note that in Vulcan Next those problem are kind of obsolete, because you are able to create "Models" without Mongo => it's quite easy to create an "Agent" model like in your example whose data is stored in a local array. Instead of creating a custom resolver, you create a custom connector, replacing the db level logic (literraly the model in an MVC approach, instead of the Controller). There are premises of this in Vulcan Meteor but the limitation is that you can't create connectors in user land (eg storing in Redis, storing locally, etc. etc.).

[EloyID]

Hi, for me this is very useful

I had to create a query only because we wanted to filter by the field of a related collection, and then you lose all the advantages of useMulti. I think I did not code it very nicely so I had cache problems.

The only problem I can see it's that when aggregating, if you have to query all the docs and then pass them to apply new filtering; it won't be very performing for big databases. I don't understand well useMulti, but can't we just give the option to inject some aggregation steps in the useMulti2 query to create the type of documents we want and then we let the input filters work ?

Hope it helps, nice feature!

[eric-burel]

This would raise security issues, you don't want users to be able to compute any kind of aggregates based on client-side inputs. Technically we could, but you'd need to create a whole new layer of security to check if the user is allowed to compute some aggregations, and I think it would be extremely difficult/maybe not even possible. So you have to do it server side and create a new resolver. Aggregations are quite complex in Mongo.

[EloyID]

But as you can alreday create hasOne or hasMany relationship you could config the fields of the related collection to be also filterable

[Neobii]

If using $lookup is one of the main use cases, perhaps it can be tied into the relations part of the schema definition?

[ErikDakoda]

@EloyID

The only problem I can see it's that when aggregating, if you have to query all the docs and then pass them to apply new filtering; it won't be very performing for big databases. I don't understand well useMulti, but can't we just give the option to inject some aggregation steps in the useMulti2 query to create the type of documents we want and then we let the input filters work ?

Actually you can pass an input prop to the aggregation, like you can to any multi query, which can include a filter:

const input = {
  filter: {
    supplierCode: { _eq: "190" }
  },
};
const queryOptions = {
  typeName: 'ScrubErrorsSummaryAggregate',
  fragmentName: 'ScrubErrorsSummaryAggregateFragment',
  input,
};
const useMultiResults = useMulti2(queryOptions);

The input is passed to the custom query resolver, where you can use it to modify your aggregation:

const resolver = async function (root, { input }, context) {
  const { filter } = input;
  const { currentUser } = context;

  const pipeline = [
    // pipeline stages
  ];

  if (filter?.supplierCode?._eq) {
    pipeline.splice(0, 0, {
      $match: {
        supplierId: filter.supplierCode._eq,
      },
    });
  }

  let docs = await Products.aggregateAsync(pipeline);
  // enforce doc and field-level permissions if necessary
  return { results: docs, totalCount: docs.length };
};

const filterable = [{
  name: 'supplierCode',
  type: 'String',
}];

registerCustomQuery({
  typeName: 'ScrubErrorsSummaryAggregate',
  description: 'Aggregate products grouped and scrub error',
  schema: scrubErrorsSummaryAggregateSchema,
  resolver,
  filterable,
});

I will probably add a full working example in Vulcan Starter.

@Neobii Right now you have to write the pipeline stages yourself, but you are right, in the future we could maybe auto-generate them using relations and other info in the schema.