GraphQL Schema Introspection

important

Introspection must be enabled to execute queries and receive responses.

Introduction

Introspection provides a way to expose AppDirect's schema to our customers. It provides information and documentation about the available queries and mutations that are supported by the graph.

GraphQL Schema Introspection provides:

• GraphQL Documentation Explorer - Search the Documentation Explorer for queries, mutations, and object types.

• Interactive Query builder - Provides all available queries and mutations and their fields. Select fields to build the query.

• Autocompletion - Intelligent autocomplete query builder of, for example, fields, arguments, and types.

Introspection benefits

Introspection should be used as a discovery and diagnostic tool in the development phase to primarily expose GraphQL schema to our customers. It's important for tooling and GraphQL IDEs like Apollo Studio, GraphiQL, and Postman. Behind the scenes, GraphQL IDEs use introspection to enable building queries by offering auto-completion and interactive query tools for faster development and testing.

Prerequisites

Graph Schema Introspection must be enabled to be available for use. See Enabling GraphQL tools.