GraphQL subscriptions for AnyCable

A (mostly) drop-in replacement for default ActionCable subscriptions adapter shipped with graphql gem but works with AnyCable!

IMPORTANT: This gem is still in proof of concept stage. It is not yet tested in production and everything may change without any notice. You have warned.

Gem Version

Sponsored by Evil Martians

Why?

AnyCable is fast because it does not execute any Ruby code. But default subscription implementation shipped with graphql gem requires to do exactly that: re-evaluate GraphQL queries in ActionCable process. AnyCable doesn't support this (it's possible but hard to implement).

See https://github.com/anycable/anycable-rails/issues/40 for more details and discussion.

Differences

  • Subscription information is stored in Redis database configured to be used by AnyCable. No expiration or data cleanup yet.
  • GraphQL queries for all subscriptions are re-executed in the process that triggers event (it may be web server, async jobs, rake tasks or whatever)

Compatibility

  • Should work with ActionCable in development
  • Should work without Rails via LiteCable

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'graphql-anycable'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install graphql-anycable

Usage

  1. Plug it into the schema (replace from ActionCable adapter if you have one):

    class MySchema < GraphQL::Schema
      use GraphQL::Subscriptions::AnyCableSubscriptions
    
      subscription SubscriptionType
    end
    
  2. Execute query in ActionCable/LiteCable channel.

    class GraphqlChannel < ApplicationCable::Channel
      def execute(data)
        result = 
          MySchema.execute(
            query: data["query"],
            context: context,
            variables: Hash(data["variables"]),
            operation_name: data["operationName"],
          )
    
        transmit(
          result: result.subscription? ? { data: nil } : result.to_h,
          more: result.subscription?,
        )
      end
    
      def unsubscribed
        channel_id = params.fetch("channelId")
        MySchema.subscriptions.delete_channel_subscriptions(channel_id)
      end
    
      private
    
      def context
        {
          account_id: &.id,
          channel: self,
        }
      end
    end
    

    Make sure that you're passing channel instance as channel key to the context.

  3. Trigger events as usual:

    MySchema.subscriptions.trigger(:product_updated, {}, Product.first!, scope: .id)
    

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Envek/graphql-anycable.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.