Should I order GraphQL results server side or client side?

Question

We are using graphql-ruby in one of our internal projects: A Rails API backend serving a React Native Web frontend. I'm curious as to what is considered best practice in regard to handling ordering of returned results.

One option I see is that we provide both order_direction and field_to_order_by arguments, and the client must explicitly state each for the query (providing defaults as well, of course).

One way to handle this would be

if (sort_column = args[:sort_by])
  if (direction = args[:direction])
    users = users.order(sort_column.to_sym => direction.to_sym)
  else
    users = users.order(sort_column.to_sym) # default sort order
  end
end

Another option of course would be to provide all results in a pre-defined direction (ASC or DESC) and have the client itself reorder. This seems very inefficient, however. As there's a real dearth of information on how to approach this, I'm curious what's considered best practice.

Any help appreciated!

Ordering on the database level will always be quicker. – Eyeslandic Jul 11 '19 at 08:33 — Eyeslandic, Jul 11 '19 at 08:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 20 '21 at 23:01

1

As best practice ordering results should be made as far down the server as possible (database).

But, as I understand you're questioning between ordering results on the server side (GraphQL API) or on the frontend side (React Native Application), so:

I would recommend providing the client application with an option to get the results in a specific order and handle the sorting on the Server API, that way the client application should only display the results without the need of spending time processing them.

edited Dec 20 '21 at 23:01

halfer

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answered Jul 11 '19 at 08:59

Marco Daniel

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Thanks for the suggestion, Marco! I think you're right that that makes the most sense and with the highest level of efficiency. – ianbayne Jul 16 '19 at 00:23
Sure @ianbayne, don't forget to accept the answer if it's helpful. – Marco Daniel Jul 16 '19 at 05:58
Thanks, @Marco, I'm not super familiar with Stackoverflow yet. – ianbayne Jul 17 '19 at 07:11
No worries, we're here to help :) here is a guide that can help you for the future https://stackoverflow.com/help/someone-answers – Marco Daniel Jul 17 '19 at 13:05

Should I order GraphQL results server side or client side?

1 Answers1