Hi, I wanted to understand how apollo GQL plugin w...

# graphql-kotlin

[Rupesh]

Hi,
I wanted to understand how apollo GQL plugin works for android and iOS. Do they share the same codebase for generating the platform specific code? I wanted to build something which generate the code for both the platform at compile time. Any leads would be appreciated.

Is there anyway to achieve the same thing by sharing the common codebase?

[Shane Myrick]

#apollo-android may be better for getting more details. I know the code bases are separate but they do support Kotlin Native in the android client, which could help generate sharable code

[Rupesh]

@Shane Myrick Thanks. I'll check that how to use Kotlin Native sharable code.

[Rupesh]

I just found out GraphQL-Kotlin and you are one of the contributor of the repo. Could you please give me some more details. I know how to build gradle-plugin . I just want to understand how to reuse the same codebase for iOS

[Shane Myrick]

We currently do not support Kotlin Native/Multiplatform for our client. That support is being tracked here: https://github.com/ExpediaGroup/graphql-kotlin/issues/876

[Jilles van Gurp]

I created that ticket last year. By now we have our own client generation. @Nikky who works with me left a comment on on the ticket recently with some details on that. We also shifted our focus from android to kotlin-js as we are mainly focusing on that for UI now (we use fritz2). We still use the expedia graphql framework, which has improved enormously over the last few months.

Kotlinx serialization is definitely the way to go for serializing. The hard part is generating functions stubs for graphql queries. Especially when mostly you just want the client equivalents of the exact functions you are exposing on the server side. IMHO, a compiler plugin might actually be the way ultimately. That would allow full use of reflection during the code generation phase without requiring that at run time. Mostly the rest of the code can use things like ktor client, kotlinx-serialization, etc.

Minus the code generation, that's pretty much what we do internally. There's a bit more ceremony to creating client stubs than I like but not a whole lot.

[Nikky]

note that we share serializable data classes between expedia-graphql-backend and the multiplatform-graphql-client and do not generate new classes from the sdl or such
we have 3 modules: server mp-client and mp-data and have quite a few things synced up manually

ideally what i would like to see .. is adding a new query/mutation on the server using serializable classes from data would generate a Query/Mutatation that uses the same serializable in mp-client

but plugin setups that span multiple modules sound reallly hard.. so maybe the same is doable using multiple common sourceSets in a kotlin("multiplatform") project
but that forcefully merges client and server code and makes the sourcesets rather messy...