GraphQL with .NET Core (Part - VII: Data Persistence)

Code samples used in this blog series have been updated to latest version of .NET Core (5.0.4) and GraphQL-Dotnet (4.2.0). Follow this link to get the updated samples.

This post focuses more on configuring a persistent data storage rather than discussing different aspects of GraphQL. With that being said, let's connect to an in-memory database for fake testing.

In our data access layer, we will have a repository. Since it's a good practice to code against abstraction; we will create an interface first for the repository class i.e. IRepository

public interface IRepository
{
    Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Item>> GetItems();
    Task<Item> GetItemByTag(string tag);
    Task<Item> AddItem(Item item);
}

IRepository.cs

We are already familiar with the GetItemByTag and AddItem methods. The GetItems returns all the items in the inventory. We will add a GraphQL collection field for that later.

The implementation of the IRepository is pretty simple as following,

public class Repository : IRepository
{
    private ApplicationDbContext _applicationDbContext;

    public Repository(ApplicationDbContext applicationDbContext)
    {
        _applicationDbContext = applicationDbContext;
    }

    public Task<Item> GetItemByTag(string tag)
    {
        return _applicationDbContext.Items.FirstAsync(i => i.Tag.Equals(tag));
    }

    public async Task<IReadOnlyCollection<Item>> GetItems()
    {
        return await _applicationDbContext.Items.ToListAsync();
    }

    public async Task<Item> AddItem(Item item)
    {
        var addedEntity = await _applicationDbContext.Items.AddAsync(item);
        return addedEntity.Entity;
    }
}

We are using entity framework core, hence the introduction of ApplicationDbContext. The class extends from the DbContext of entity framework and contains a single DbSet for the Item entity. It will create a table named Items in memory,

public class ApplicationDbContext : DbContext
{
    public ApplicationDbContext(DbContextOptions<ApplicationDbContext> options) : base(options)
    {

    }
    public DbSet<Item> Items { get; set; }
}

DbContextOptions is a way to pass options such as database connection string while configuring ApplicationDbContext inside ConfigureServices method of Startup.cs. In our case, we just have to specify the name of the in-memory database as follow,

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    /* Code removed for brevity */

    services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options => options.UseInMemoryDatabase("InMemoryDb"));
}

For this, we need to install the Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore package. Install this via Nuget or dotnet-cli from the official package source,

dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore -s https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json -v 3.1.4

AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>() registers the DbContext with a scoped service lifetime. Difference between singleton and scope lifetime are,

A Singleton service instance is created only one time (when the application first starts) and the same instance is shared with other services for every subsequent request.
A Scope service instance is created every time a new request comes in. It's like singleton per request.

The UseInMemoryDatabase() extension comes from a separate package i.e. Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.InMemory. Install this as well,

dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.InMemory -s https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json -v 3.1.4

Notice, we mentioned Item as an entity earlier. In order to work with an in-memory database, every entity should have an identity field. The modified Item class with an identity field is as follows,

public class Item 
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Tag { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public decimal Price { get; set; }
}

Time to register the IRepository with a transient lifetime,

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    /* Code removed for brevity */

    services.AddTransient<IRepository, Repository>();
    services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options => options.UseInMemoryDatabase("InMemoryDb"));
}

One last thing I want to do is to add a new collection field for showing all the items. The type of the field would be a ListGraphType of ItemType,

public class GameStoreQuery : ObjectGraphType
{
    public GameStoreQuery(IRepository repository)
    {
        Field<StringGraphType>(
            name: "name",
            resolve: context => "Steam"
        );

        FieldAsync<ItemType>(
            "item",
            arguments: new QueryArguments(new QueryArgument<NonNullGraphType<StringGraphType>> { Name = "tag" }),
            resolve: async context =>
            {
                var tag = context.GetArgument<string>("tag");
                return await repository.GetItemByTag(tag);
            }
        );

        FieldAsync<ListGraphType<ItemType>, IReadOnlyCollection<Item>>(
            "items",
            resolve: async context =>
            {
                return await repository.GetItems();
            }
        );
    }
}

GameStoreQuery.cs

Notice, I've used FieldAsync instead of Field since we are dealing with Task. The Mutation is also modified to call the AddItem of the repository as follows,

public GameStoreMutation(IRepository repository)
{
    FieldAsync<ItemType>(
        "createItem",
        arguments: new QueryArguments(
            new QueryArgument<NonNullGraphType<ItemInputType>> { Name = "item" }
        ),
        resolve: async context =>
        {
            var item = context.GetArgument<Item>("item");
            return await repository.AddItem(item);
        });
}

GameStoreMutation.cs

Feel free to delete the DataSource.cs class as it is not needed anymore.

Run the application now and you can fake testing your createItem mutation field as follows,