Apollo-link: [Feature] apollo-link-http GET method remove ignored characters

I’ve tried to do the modification outside the apollo-link-http library by creating a custom ApolloLink extension to strip the query before it gets passed towards createHttpLink but with no luck unfortunately.

import { ApolloLink } from 'apollo-link';
import gql from 'graphql-tag';
import { print } from 'graphql/language/printer';
import { stripIgnoredCharacters } from 'graphql/utilities/stripIgnoredCharacters';

class CreateShortQueryLink extends ApolloLink {
  request(operation, forward) {
    const strippedQuery = stripIgnoredCharacters(print(operation.query));

    const request = {
      ...operation,
      getContext: operation.getContext,
      setContext: operation.setContext,
      query: gql(strippedQuery),
    };

    return forward(request);
  }
}

const link = ApolloLink.from([
  new CreateShortQueryLink(),
  createHttpLink({ uri: 'http://localhost:3000/graphql' }),
]);

It seems that the print of graphql/language/printer is adding again the unnecessary characters.

print(gql('query Posts{posts(orderBy:id_DESC){id title __typename}}'))

// outputs
query Posts{posts(orderBy:id_DESC){id title __typename}} query Posts {
  posts(orderBy: id_DESC) {
    id
    title
    __typename
  }
}

This same method print method seems to be also used by apollo-link-http-common which is used in apollo-link-http to create the GET query.

https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-link/blob/c32e170b72ae1a94cea1c633f977d2dbfcada0e1/packages/apollo-link-http-common/src/index.ts#L239

Also tried the above with something like:

export const createMinifyLink = () => {
  return new ApolloLink((operation: Operation, forward: NextLink) => {
    const stripped = stripIgnoredCharacters(operation.query.loc!.source);
    return forward({
      ...operation,
      getContext: operation.getContext,
      setContext: operation.setContext,
      query: gql(stripped),
    });
  });
};

But get a load of warnings about re-using fragment names and problems writing to store.

I would use an HTTP Interceptor but then you've got issues with differing hashes when using APQ. I've got queries that are 44kb and full of %20%20%20. Think if I can strip the ignored characters it'd probably half the size.

You can't even pre-process it because ApolloClient just adds __typename throughout and re-prettifies it:

export function stripIgnoredCharactersGql(literals: string[], ...placeholders: any[]) {
  const strippedLiterals = literals.map(str => stripIgnoredCharacters(str));
  return gql(strippedLiterals, ...placeholders);
}

export const configQuery = stripIgnoredCharactersGql`
  query {
    hello {
      world
    }
  }
`;

We've ended up patching apollo-link-http-common via https://www.npmjs.com/package/patch-package to use stripIgnoredCharacters right after printer was used:

patches/apollo-link-http-common+0.2.13.patch

diff --git a/node_modules/apollo-link-http-common/lib/index.js b/node_modules/apollo-link-http-common/lib/index.js
index 05cd095..c79da1b 100644
--- a/node_modules/apollo-link-http-common/lib/index.js
+++ b/node_modules/apollo-link-http-common/lib/index.js
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 Object.defineProperty(exports, "__esModule", { value: true });
 var tslib_1 = require("tslib");
 var printer_1 = require("graphql/language/printer");
+var utilities_1 = require("graphql/utilities/stripIgnoredCharacters");
 var ts_invariant_1 = require("ts-invariant");
 var defaultHttpOptions = {
     includeQuery: true,
@@ -91,6 +92,7 @@ exports.selectHttpOptionsAndBody = function (operation, fallbackConfig) {
         body.extensions = extensions;
     if (http.includeQuery)
         body.query = printer_1.print(query);
+        body.query = utilities_1.stripIgnoredCharacters(body.query);
     return {
         options: options,
         body: body,