Resolvers

When defining a GraphQL schema, you usually start with the definition of the schema for your API, for example, let's take a look at this schema:

import strawberry

@strawberry.type
class User:
    name: str


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    last_user: User

type User {
    name: String!
}

type Query {
    lastUser: User!
}

We have defined a User type and a Query type. Next, to define how the data is returned from our server, we will attach resolvers to our fields.

Let's define a resolver

Let's create a resolver and attach it to the lastUser field. A resolver is a Python function that returns data. In Strawberry there are two ways of defining resolvers; the first is to pass a function to the field definition, like this:

def get_last_user() -> User:
    return User(name="Marco")

@strawberry.type
class Query:
    last_user: User = strawberry.field(resolver=get_last_user)

Now when Strawberry executes the following query, it will call the get_last_user function to fetch the data for the lastUser field:

{
  lastUser {
    name
  }
}

{
  "data": {
    "lastUser": {
      "name": "Marco"
    }
  }
}

Defining resolvers as methods

The other way to define a resolver is to use strawberry.field as a decorator, like here:

@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    def last_user(self) -> User:
        return User(name="Marco")

this is useful when you want to colocate resolvers and types or when you have very small resolvers.

NOTE: the self argument is a bit special here, when executing a GraphQL query, in case of resolvers defined with a decorator, the self argument corresponds to the root value that field. In this example the root value is the value Query type, which is usually None. You can change the root value when calling the execute method on a Schema. More on root values below.

Defining arguments

Fields can also have arguments; in Strawberry the arguments for a field are defined on the resolver, as you would normally do in a Python function. Let's define a field on a Query that returns a user by ID:

import strawberry


@strawberry.type
class User:
    name: str


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    def user(self, id: strawberry.ID) -> User:
        # here you'd use the `id` to get the user from the database
        return User(name="Marco")

type User {
    name: String!
}

type Query {
    user(id: ID!): User!
}

Accessing field's parent's data

It is quite common to want to be able to access the data from the field's parent in a resolver. For example let's say that we want to define a fullName field on our User. We can define a new field with a resolver that combines its first and last names:

import strawberry


@strawberry.type
class User:
    first_name: str
    last_name: str

    @strawberry.field
    def full_name(self) -> str:
        return f"{self.first_name} {self.last_name}"

type User {
    firstName: String!
    lastName: String!
    fullName: String!
}

In the case of a decorated resolver you can use the self parameter as you would do in a method on a normal Python class¹.

For resolvers defined as normal Python functions, you can use the special root parameter, when added to arguments of the function, Strawberry will pass to it the value of the parent:

import strawberry

def full_name(root: User) -> str:
    return f"{root.first_name} {root.last_name}"

@strawberry.type
class User:
    first_name: str
    last_name: str
    full_name: str = strawberry.field(resolver=full_name)

Accessing execution information

Sometimes it is useful to access the information for the current execution context. To do so you can provide the info parameter to resolvers, like this:

import strawberry
from strawberry.types import Info

def full_name(root: User, info: Info) -> str:
    return f"{root.first_name} {root.last_name} {info.field_name}"

@strawberry.type
class User:
    first_name: str
    last_name: str
    full_name: str = strawberry.field(resolver=full_name)

API

Info objects contain information for the current execution context:

class Info(Generic[ContextType, RootValueType])