org.springframework.graphql.test.tester.DefaultGraphQlTester allow access to raw response json

[s-weller]

My project has a parameterized test where I pass an input graphql query file location and a response json file location as arguments, and use the DefaultGraphQlTester to validate test queries

This works great, except for the fact that my application has a couple of composite mutations where I create a parent and child object in the same request, and for those I'd really just like access to the entire json response document to check manually instead of having to give a path relative to the top level "data" path.

What we curerently have

graphQLTester.execute(document)
   .path(relativePathFromDataNode)
   .matchesJson(expectedJson);

What I would like

graphQLTester.execute(document)
   .jsonBody() 
   .matchesJson(expectedJson);

Not picky about the syntax, I would just rather be able to compare a response like this:

{
  "data": {
    "createParent": {
      ... parent fields...
      },
   "createChild": {
      ... child fields ...
     }
  }
}

to a matching json document. Currently, I can supply '*' to the path argument in the first query, but that generates a list of nodes to match against

[
   {
      ... parent fields...
   },
   {
      ... child fields...
   }
]

which I feel is less intuitive than just allowing us access to the full json body when we need it. Thanks for your time and consideration, appreciate all the work you guys do.

[bclozel]

Sorry for the delayed response and thanks for raising this, we're glad Spring for GraphQL is working out for you and your team.

I am going to decline this enhancement request for a few reasons.
First, as of #1131, you can get the full GraphQlResponse from the tester response and eventually call toMap to get the entire response map (not just the "data"). I guess this wouldn't solve your particular use case, but now you can access the entire response data.
We could add a new org.springframework.graphql.test.tester.GraphQlTester.Response#asJson() method and fluently provide matchesJson and matchesJsonStrictly, but this would create some noise on the existing API: we can't really re-expose the entire Traversable interface there, because all the entity variants wouldn't make sense and we would need to somehow think about new names that wouldn't be confusing.
The use case you are describing seems to show that you don't really need a GraphQlTester to test for particular paths and features, but rather a broader client that tests for global behavior. Maybe in this case it would be better to use WebTestClient and check the behavior of the entire transport layer?

We can reconsider this if we get more demand for this, but right now it seems that the tradeoffs are in favor of keeping things as they are.

[rstoyanchev]

Just wondering, have you tried an empty path? That should give you everything under "data".

graphQLTester.execute(document)
   .path("")
   .matchesJson(expectedJson);