Variables

Variables

GraphQL offers a way to reuse your queries dynamically through variables. These will come into play especially if you're accessing the API programmatically (such as our Node or Python examples).

Before:

Query (no variables)

{
  course(id: "00000000-5945-95c7-65fd-a9747b200317") {
    id
    title
    flows {
      title
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "data": {
    "course": {
      "id": "00000000-5945-95c7-65fd-a9747b200317",
      "title": "History of Dunder-Mifflin",
      "flows": [
        {
          "title": "Founding a Company"
        },
        {
          "title": "Corporate Citizenship"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

With variables:

Query (with variables)

query($courseId: UUID!) {
  course(id: $courseId) {
    id
    title
    flows {
      title
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "data": {
    "course": {
      "id": "00000000-5945-95c7-65fd-a9747b200317",
      "title": "History of Dunder-Mifflin",
      "flows": [
        {
          "title": "Founding A Company"
        },
        {
          "title": "Corporate Citizenship"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Here's an example of what this would look like in the API Explorer:

GraphiQL allows variables to be passed on the bottom-left pane.

See also

• Working with variables from GitHub's GraphQL API docs (archive.org)
• GraphQL Variables from Shopify's API docs (archive.org)