liinkiing / next-ts-graphql-relay-starter

An opiniated Next powered starter which include support for Relay with GraphQL SSR/SSG support, codegen, styled component / system, framer motion and Cypress

Next GraphQL Relay Starter

A starter to bootstrap your Next application (nice pun gg) with some noice GraphQL (🎊 With SSR/SSG support 🎊) with Relay

Usage

$ yarn
# install dependencies

$ yarn dev
# launch concurrently relay:watch and dev:next

$ yarn relay
# launch Relay code generation based on your graphql`` template literals

$ yarn relay:watch
# same as above, with watch mode

$ yarn dev:next
# launch Next dev script

$ yarn build
# launch Next build script

$ yarn start
# launch Next start script

$ yarn test
# launch test suite

$ yarn ts:check
# check TypeScript

$ yarn lint
# run ESLint

GraphQL support

The starter comes by default with Relay. All Relay related code and config is located under ~/relay folder. It contains a relay environment for the client and the server. The ~/relay/index.ts file choose the appropriate environment based on the execution context (server side / client) It uses environment variables to define the API endpoint, so you have to copy/paste the .env.sample file and rename it to .env (not committed). The variable name is NEXT_PUBLIC_GRAPHQL_API

To make the relay compiler work, you must have a schema.graphql at the root (can be modified in the relay.config.js, see the configuration reference).

I have annotated the file with a /** @type {import('@types/relay-compiler/lib/bin/RelayCompilerMain').Config} */ jsdoc, so normally your editor should pick the TypeScript definitions and you should have autocomplete on the configuration file.

Based on this and your graphql template literals in the src and pages folder, it will auto generate corresponding the corresponding types.

SSR / SSG

If you wanna use SSR / SSG, you can use for exemple the getStaticProps from Next to load some data and inject them in your Relay store. By default, this template assumes that we should pre populate the store in the client side when a prop named relayRecords is set, for exemple in getStaticProps. Then, you could for exemple use a QueryRenderer from Relay, and set the fetchPolicy to store-and-network so when the client mount the application, the store of Relay will be populated (it's done in the _app.tsx file) by what you've put here. In the server side / build side, you could use something like this

// pages/index.tsx
import { GetStaticProps, NextPage } from 'next'
import { QueryRenderer } from 'react-relay'
import { fetchQuery, graphql, useRelayEnvironment } from 'relay-hooks'
// The bottom line imports what Relay compiler generate
import { pages_indexQuery } from '~/__generated__/pages_indexQuery.graphql'
import { initEnvironment } from '~/relay'
import { RelayProps } from '~/@types'
import StarWarsList from '~/components/StarWarsList'

const QUERY = graphql`
  # The relay compiler forces you to have some particular namings. Next pages
  # must begin with pages_<your_module_name> or Relay will throw an error

  query pages_indexQuery {
    allFilms {
      ...StarWarsList_films
    }
  }
`

const Index: NextPage = () => {
  const environment = useRelayEnvironment()
  return (
    <div>
      <QueryRenderer<pages_indexQuery>
        variables={{}}
        fetchPolicy="store-and-network"
        environment={environment}
        query={QUERY}
        render={({ error, props }) => {
          if (error) return <div>{error.message}</div>
          else if (props && props.allFilms) return <StarWarsList films={props.allFilms} />
          return <div>Loading...</div>
        }}
      />
    </div>
  )
}

export const getStaticProps: GetStaticProps<RelayProps> = async () => {
  const { environment } = initEnvironment()

  await fetchQuery(environment, QUERY, {}).toPromise()

  // This is what the _app.tsx will use to populate the initial Relay store.
  // Thanks to this and the "store-and-network" policy, when the page will be
  // mounted on the client-side, Relay will already have the data in it's store
  // so there will be no loading and it will be prerendered on your page, so
  // it may be useful if your page have some data requirements / SEO that needs
  // to be rendered on the server
  const relayRecords = environment.getStore().getSource().toJSON()

  return {
    props: {
      relayRecords,
    },
  }
}

export default Index

A very small exemple application using this starter with Relay and proper TypeScript typings can be found here: https://github.com/Liinkiing/next-ts-graphql-relay-sample, because it may be hard to guess what types to use, for example when using fragments, or that QueryRenderer is a React component that accept a generic type, so you can write this in your JSX to have proper typings <QueryRenderer<pages_indexQuery>>...</QueryRenderer>

Configuration

All configuration related files are located in the relay.config.js file A .graphqlconfig file is also provided, if you use a GraphQL extension in your IDE, it will allow you to introspect the schema of a given endpoint and writing it in a schema.graphql file. You must enter your API url here

Next config

It comes already configured with some nice plugin. You can see in next.config.js what is used. In short, it allows support of importing images files and fonts within webpack. It also comes with NProgress support, by default so it shows a small loading bar in top of the page when loading. You can find the component in ~/components/NProgress.tsx, and it is used in the custom _app.tsx

Styled component

The template comes with styled-components. Again, you can either choose to not use it, this is a personal choice. You can also find a styles folder, which contains many related styled-components files to keep things organized. It's also includes all themes-related stuff in here. It's again a personal convention that I follow, feel free to annihilate this directory if you want 😢

Styled system

It also comes with styled-system. It is a great way to build reusable UI blocks with a great props API and consistent spaces / typography. A lot comes from the theme, provided in ~/styles/themes/base.ts where we define some breakpoints, spacings and typography stuff. It allows then the custom AppBox component (~/ui/AppBox) to be aware of your theme and then build something amazing with the primitives. By default, this starter provides some basic examples components that uses this pattern, for example the AppNav component (~/components/layout/AppNav).

🔥 It also supports and provides autocomplete for props that takes source from the theme (e.g bg, zIndex, border...). 🔥

TypeScript > 4.1 is mandatory because I'm using the new Template Litteral Types to provide autocompletion of the color prop based of the nested colors object, so when using bg prop for exemple, you should have autocompletion for red.xxx, blue.xxx or anything defined in your colors.ts. It supports nested elements with a dot notation! (that's why TS 4.1 is required)

Framer motion

Again, personal preference here, but the starter comes with framer motion already configured to handle Next pages changes and enable some smooth transitions when navigating. You can find the default variant used for the page transitions in ~/common/framer.ts.

Testing

Jest and @testing-library/react is used to run your tests. It comes preconfigured with ts-jest so your tests also checks your types. You can look the jest.config.js and the file setupTest.ts to see what's in there. jest-styled-components is also used to have deterministic classNames within your styled components that you are testing. Cypress starter for e2e tests. Take a look at Cypress config file cypress.json

Cypress

This starter comes by default with Cypress and some sensible defaults and a custom plugin which enable you to inject your .env* files in the Cypress.env helper. It also add support for a per-environment configuration file. Just add a cypress..json. It uses by default the cypress.json and then extend the configuration if you have a cypress.<env>.json. Take a look at the various configuration file in the cypress folder and the custom plugin in cypress/plugins/index.ts. This folder is independant and lives by itself, so it has his own dependencies / scripts / tsconfig and do not pollute the global namespace. See why an isolated folder

It also have an opiniated way of interacting with some of your webpages in Cypress. As your application will grow (and pages would become complex), it's recommended to have some sort of "Page objects" which allows you to work in a more conveniant way for some complex page. See more here https://basarat.gitbook.io/typescript/intro-1/cypress#tip-creating-page-objects.

It also comes with two custom commands (cypress/support/commands.ts) that are autocompleted (see cypress/@types/index.d.ts)

cy.server() // start mocking the calls made to the server, needed to mock later the queries
cy.mockGraphQL() // in your test, allow to start intercepting requests made to your /graphql/ endpoint
cy.mockGraphQLOperation('ViewerQuery') // internally alias the request, so you can do later in your test cy.wait
// your test ...
cy.wait('@ViewerQuery') // waits for the graphql operation to succeed

Aliases

It includes by default support for aliases in tsconfig.json. They are 1 defaulted alias, ready to use :

// ~ refers to src folder
import { something } from '~/file'

You can also use for your convenience the global __DEV__ variable, which is injected by webpack with the DefinePlugin (see next.config.js).

@types and extending modules

It also includes a @types directory under src, so you can easily separate your types or extends some external modules. They are also included in the tsconfig.json For example, if some package named foo does not have any types in DefinitelyTyped, you could add a index.d.ts under src/@types/foo/index.d.ts. It is just my personal convention, so do as you want!

// src/@types/foo/index.d.ts

// to make sure Typescript get the original types from the module (if any)
import * as foo from 'foo'

declare module 'foo' {
  declare function foo(bar: string): boolean
}

Because the @types directory is declared in typeRoots, Typescript will no longer complain if you imported your package with missing types

Tooling

The template includes Prettier, ESLint (with Typescript-eslint), Babel and lint-staged. All their related configurations are in the *rc files (except for lint-staged, which is located in the package.json).