Sharing scalars between modules with Chimp

Previously if you wanted to reuse the same scalar in different modules you had to redefine it in all of them. That made sense from the modularity point of view - after all the modules are supposed to be self-sufficient. But scalars are such low-level building blocks that they are usually shared and it made sense to come up with a new pattern. We discussed and came up with a backward-compatible solution with @jmvtrinidad and @ovidiup13. Now, starting with version chimp@4.1.2 if you just want to use a scalar in a given module, but do not want to redefine it, use @predefined directive.

For example:

src/global/global.graphql

scalar JSON
scalar Date

**src/moduleOne/moduleOne.graphql

type WithJSON {
  id: ID!
  json: JSON!
}
scalar JSON @predefined

src/moduleTwo/moduleTwo.graphql

type WithDate {
  id: ID!
  date: Date!
}
scalar Date @predefined

will result with src/global/scalars/Date.ts and src/global/scalars/JSON.ts files generated and connected to the apollo resolvers object. moduleOne and moduleTwo will NOT generate their versions of scalars but will be using the ones implemented in src/global/scalars/.

Obviously if you extract a given module to a separate micrograph you will need to remove the @predefined keyword and reimplement the scalar. If you are not sure what am I talking about here - don't worry, you probably don't need to. :-)

Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comments below.