Query results are not IPLD encoded #109

New Issue

dboreham · 2023-08-25T12:51:55Z

dboreham commented

2023-08-25 12:51:55 +00:00

In query results, references are encoded as regular attributes.

A key property of an IPLD service is that record properties that are (hash linked) references to other records should be explicitly denoted, allowing graph walking across linked records by software that does not understand their complete schema.

laconicd does not currently do this. For example in this GraphQL response, the reference is encoded as a regular string typed attribute:

        "attributes": [
          {
            "key": "build_artifact_cid",
            "value": {
              "string": "QmP8jTG1m9GSDJLCbeWhVSVgEzCPPwXRdCRuJtQ5Tz9Kc9",
              "json": null,
              "reference": null
            }
          },

Instead, responses should explicitly denote references, either in actual DAG-JSON format, or some scheme that can be transcoded to DAG-JSON, e.g.

        "attributes": [
            {"build_artifact_cid": {"/": "QmP8jTG1m9GSDJLCbeWhVSVgEzCPPwXRdCRuJtQ5Tz9Kc9"} }

In query results, references are encoded as regular attributes. A key property of an IPLD service is that record properties that are (hash linked) references to other records should be explicitly denoted, allowing graph walking across linked records by software that does not understand their complete schema. laconicd does not currently do this. For example in this GraphQL response, the reference is encoded as a regular string typed attribute: ``` "attributes": [ { "key": "build_artifact_cid", "value": { "string": "QmP8jTG1m9GSDJLCbeWhVSVgEzCPPwXRdCRuJtQ5Tz9Kc9", "json": null, "reference": null } }, ``` Instead, responses should explicitly denote references, either in actual [DAG-JSON](https://ipld.io/specs/codecs/dag-json/spec/) format, or some scheme that can be transcoded to DAG-JSON, e.g. ``` "attributes": [ {"build_artifact_cid": {"/": "QmP8jTG1m9GSDJLCbeWhVSVgEzCPPwXRdCRuJtQ5Tz9Kc9"} } ```