Hey ya’ll I have a question related to setting up Federation (extensions?) that I could use some direction on. We have two entities that look like this: •

Box

◦ id ◦ size ◦ … ◦ shape ids •

Shape

◦ id ◦ type ◦ …

Box

and

Shape

are served by two independent services. Can we (or does it make sense to) have

Shape

“extend”

Box

to “fully resolve” shapes for a given box?

what is the relationship between the types? using Apollo Federation you can extend types with additional fields i.e. (omitting directives and some types for simplicity)

// service A
type Query {
  foo: Foo
}

type Foo {
   id: ID
   bar: Bar
   baz: Baz
}

// service B
extend type Foo {
   id: ID // key
   qux: QUX
   quux QUUX
}

note: there is no query available in service B it extends a type from service A with additional fields

It would be something like:

// service A
type Query {
  foo: Foo
}

type Foo {
  id: ID
  barIDs: [ID]
  ...
}

// service B
type Bar {
  id: ID
  ...
}

extend type Foo {
  bars: [Bar]
}

If that makes sense?

Federation is based around uniquely identifying your entities based on some key/keys

Let me try that approach — I think your suggestion definitely fits more inline with the federation examples I’ve been seeing. Will chat to see if that’s a practical option for us 👍

if you already have the

Box.shapeIds

as a field you could have the shape-service extend the

Box

type to add a new field

shapes: [Shape] @requires(fields: "shapeIds")

so you could resolve the list of ids in one call

https://opensource.expediagroup.com/graphql-kotlin/docs/schema-generator/federation/federated-directives/#requires-directive this definitely sounds closer to what we’re trying to accomplish 👍 will report back