Why does the NODE_DELETE configuration needs to specify a connection?

1
votes

I'm currently building a mutation that deletes a node. I looked into the NODE_DELETE mutator configuration, but it specifies it needs a parentName, parentID and connectionName.

Why does deleting a node needs theses fields ? As Relay uses global IDs, it should be fairly easy to delete a node from all connections and/or all fields it is being referenced in.

See the documentation :
Relay NODE_DELETE documentation

1
relayjs

1 Answers

0
votes

Your intuition is correct. Those fields are redundant for the purpose of deleting node from data store, only config.deletedIDFieldName is used during such operation (details in writeRelayUpdatePayload module).

However you can't leave other fields unfilled, because they are still required during validation of your mutation that extends RelayMutation class. I have no idea where this inconsistency comes from, but it's worth noting that Relay team changed the direction of development and RelayMutation will get deprecated.

RelayMutation and fat/tracked queries. Future releases will deprecate this API in favor of a static mutation API. We recommend using RelayGraphQLMutation to ease the transition to new mutations.

source: Related issue on github

After quick look in Relay's source it seems this transitional API does not use the old method of configs validation, but I haven't got a chance to experiment with it yet, so you can confirm it yourself.