GraphQL–Strawberry Shake GraphQL client

Until recently I always used the GraphQL.Client as the GraphQL client of my choice. This client is straightforward and easy-to-use.

For a new project I decided to give Strawberry Shake a try. Strawberry Shake was created by Chilicream, the creators of the HotChocolate GraphQL backend for .NET.

Strawberry Shake is using a different approach as the GraphQL.Client as it heavily relies on code generation and looks similar to the Apollo GraphQL client from a design point of view.

I mostly followed the “Get started” documentation to get the Strawberry Shake client up and running, but I didn’t get everything up and running immediatelly so I’ll add some extra detail on the points where I got into trouble.

Add the CLI tools

We start by adding the Strawberry Shake CLI tools
Open the folder that contains the project where you want to add the Strawberry Shake GraphQL client.
Now wee need to first create a dotnet tool-manifest.

dotnet new tool-manifest
Getting ready...
The template "Dotnet local tool manifest file" was created successfully.

After doing that we can install the Strawberry Shake tools locally.

dotnet tool install StrawberryShake.Tools –local

You can invoke the tool from this directory using the following commands: 'dotnet tool run dotnet-graphql' or 'dotnet dotnet-graphql'.

Tool 'strawberryshake.tools' (version '12.0.1') was successfully installed. Entry is added to the manifest file C:\projects\graphqlclientexample\.config\dotnet-tools.json.

Add the NuGet packages

Now we need to add some NuGet packages:

dotnet add package StrawberryShake.Transport.Http

dotnet add package StrawberryShake.CodeGeneration.CSharp.Analyzers

dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection

dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Http

Add the GraphQL client

Next step is to add a client using the following command dotnet graphql init {{ServerUrl}} -n {{ClientName}}.

dotnet graphql init https://example.graphql.be/graphql/ -n ExampleClient

Download schema started.

Download schema completed in 399 ms

Client configuration started.

Client configuration completed in 137 ms

A .graphqlrc.json is generated together with a schema.graphql file and a schema.extensions.graphql file:

Add a GraphQL query

At this moment no code is generated yet. Therefore we have to write our first graphql query.
Create a new .graphql file and write the query you want to execute

The next step mentioned in the documentation is that you only need to compile your code to let the code generation do its work. But nothing happened when I tried to do that.
I discovered that I had to take one extra step. I needed to set the build action for the graphql file to GraphQL compiler:

Now when I build my code a Generated folder appears containing an ExampleClient. StrawberryShake.cs file.

Use the generated query

To use the query I first need to inject the generated client:

Then I can invoke the query in a type safe manner:

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