A Better Way To Build With Fauna

February 8, 2022

How exactly does Fauna GQL Upload (FGU) solve this problem? It uses Fauna's GraphQL import endpoint to upload your schema when you enter a command in your terminal. Let's say you have a schema:

type User {
  name: String!
  email: String!
  age: Int!
}

You can then upload this schema by running:

npm run fauna

And then do this whenever you make changes to your schema. I'm also planning on adding a watch feature so that any change you make will be automatically uploaded, making the workflow even simpler.

Okay, but what about UDFs and indexes? You can upload those in the same command, just like roles, access providers, and domain data. You can even generate types based on your schema.

I'm sold! How do I use it?

Installation

To start using FGU you need to install it along with the JS driver for Fauna. This is because FGU doesn't include the JS driver itself. Doing this, allows you to choose which version of the driver to use when writing UDFs.

npm i fauna-gql-upload faunadb --save-dev

Folder structure

project
│── fauna
│  │── functions
│  │  │ my-function.ts
│  │── indexes
│  │  │ my-index.ts
│  │ schema.gql
│── src
│  │ index.html
│ package.json
│ .fauna.json

functions
indexes
providers
data
roles

Configuration

While FGU works without a config file, it can be useful to add one when your naming conventions or folder structure doesn't fit what FGU expects.

{
  "fnsDir": "db/resolvers",
  "indexDir": "db/indices",
  "codegen": {
    "outputFile": "src/graphql/types.ts"
  }
}

Add an admin key

Don't have an existing database?

If you don't have a database already, you need to follow these steps:

Run fauna create-database <database-name> to create the database
Run fauna create-key <database-name> admin to create the key
Copy the key from the output.

The output of this command will contain your admin key. Copy it.

Do you have an existing database?

If you already have a database, you need to follow these steps:

Run fauna create-key <database-name> admin to create the key
Copy the value found in the secret property of the output.

Add the secret to a `.env` file

FGU_SECRET=<YOUR_SECRET_KEY>

Add a script

{
  "scripts": {
    "fauna": "fgu"
  }
}

You would then use it like this:

npm run fauna