Context injection deprecation

[jbrwn]

Im upgrading to v5.2.0 and I am curious what the long term plan is around the now deprecated context injection functionality.

https://github.com/ExpediaGroup/graphql-kotlin/blob/master/website/docs/schema-generator/execution/contextual-data.md#interface-injection-deprecated

The example below will not generate any deprecation warnings even though the GraphQLContext interface itself has been deprecated. This may sneak up on some users when the injection "magic" suddenly stops working. Not sure what the best approach is here. Maybe log a warning at runtime? Thanks in advance for taking a look at this.

    fun contextualQuery(
        context: MyGraphQLContext,
        value: Int
    ): String = "The custom value was ${context.customValue} and the value was $value"
}

[smyrick]

If you look at the section just above where you linked, we have outlined why we deprecated the interface. This features is really just a shorthand for the DataFetchingEnvironment injection that is already supported by graphql-java

// Set in the context factory
class MyContext(val foo: String)

class ContextualQuery : Query {
    fun contextualQuery(dfe: DataFetchingEnvironment, value: Int): String {
        val context = dfe.context as MyContext
        return "The context value was ${context.foo} and the value was $value"
    }
}

You should migrate to this pattern going forward and stop using our custom interface.

---

The second part is that in graphql-java 17, the context changed from a generic object that you create to being a Map<*,Any>. This means that you have to use the explicit get and set methods on the map, but then you can put any values or objects you want this map. So instead of dfe.context you should use dfe.graphqlContext.

[dariuszkuc]

Hello 👋
Sadly we don't have a timeline for the releases so cannot say for sure when that deprecated functionality will be removed. My guess removal will be mostly driven by the changes in upstream (i.e. graphql-java dropping this support) or by potential migration to the Spring GraphQL starter (AFAIK they are targeting GA sometime in the Spring 22). Sorry cannot be more specific.

As for the warning log message -> that's a great idea. Feel free to open an issue to track this and we are always open to contributions.

[jbrwn]

@dariuszkuc @smyrick PR for runtime warning log message -> #1306. Thanks again.

[floatdrop]

@smyrick still it would be more convenient to inject GraphQLContext as well as DataFetchingEnvironment – because it can be constructed for tests, but DataFetchingEnvironment can only be mocked.

[smyrick]

@floatdrop I am no longer a core-maintainer of this project but the context interface method is still deprecated, and in my opinion should now be removed. The new generic map method in graphql-java can still be updated to have a property that you expect to cast to a specific type but the graphql-kotlin library should leave that to users to handle and what to do incase casting does not work.

cc @samuelAndalon to consider dropping GraphQLContext interface in next major version

[dariuszkuc]

fyi #1548