dependency sustainability

[oliver-sanders]

Cylc UI Server has two dependencies from the graphql-python org that are starting to look worrying:

• graphene-tornado
  • 
  • Adds tornado support to Graphene.
  • Bruno maintains the conda-forge feedstock.
  • A v3 beta was started but never released.
  • One bug we have spotted may be related - graphiql: subscriptions broken #328
• graphql-ws
  • 
  • Adds websocket support to GraphQL).
  • Hillary & Bruno maintain the conda-forge feedstock.
  • The project was forked for Graphene 3, but then abandoned.

These projects are fairly small and live in the graphql-python organisation, however, are in need of a little TLC. They are currently stuck on Graphene 2, Graphene has since moved onto version 3 (Nov 2021).

Unfortunately it is relatively unusual to write GraphQL servers in Python (clients less unusual), GraphQL came out the JS ecosystem where the most popular server lives. Consequently there isn't that much interest from the wider community in some of these more niche integrations in the Python ecosystem.

To safeguard the future of these projects they need to make it to Graphene 3, unfortunately this requires an understanding of Graphene that we don't have which makes it difficult for us to help.

What can/should we do and when can we afford the time to do it?

[oliver-sanders]

If the Graphene route becomes difficult there are two other Python GraphQL server implementations which may or may not offer an easier route:

• Ariadne
• Tartiflette

[oliver-sanders]

update: 2023

graphene-tornado is now graphene >=3 compatible, but pending release, pending a maintainer to make the release.

Because graphql-ws is still graphene < 3 this doesn't help us so #388 is blocked with or without this release.

[oliver-sanders]

Moving to Ariadne or Tartiflette is completely possible, however, this would involve swapping our GraphQL "engine" for theirs which could introduce migration pain.

Both Ariadne and Tartiflette are schema-first which means we would need to serialise our Graphene schema, then load it back in again. This should work but it might require a little extra work hooking in our resolvers, etc.

Furthermore, although both support websockets, neither support Tornado so we would still require an integration there bringing us back to the original problem.

So long story short, both are interesting alternatives which we might have considered had they been around at the time, however, migrating is not likely to be a trivial activity.

[edit] correction Ariadne uses graphql-core as its "GraphQL engine" the same thing you get with Graphene, Tartiflette presumably uses something different.