GraphQL

How to deploy and query GraphQL API for your Sanity projects

Sanity has powerful APIs for querying, patching, and mutating data in the real-time Content Lake. In addition to our GROQ API, we also support deploying GraphQL APIs to query your content.

GraphQL APIs are deployed using our command-line interface. The command inspects your studio's schema definitions and generates a GraphQL schema that closely resembles it (type names have their first letter capitalized – bookAuthor becomes BookAuthor), then adds queries allowing you to find and filter the documents stored in your Sanity dataset.

To use GraphQL with your project, you need to make sure that you follow the strict schema conventions.

For each document type in your Sanity schema, two top-level query fields are added:

• all<TypeName> - used to fetch all documents of the given type. You can add additional filters, sorting, limits, and offsets. Read more about filters below.
• <TypeName> - used to fetch a specific document of the given type by specifying its document ID.

For each object and document type in your Sanity schema, an equivalent filter type is generated. This can be used to constrain which documents are returned for a given query, much like an SQL query.

Most fields in your schema type will have a corresponding field in the filter. For instance, a book schema type may have a title field, which would then have a title filter:

Input

{
  allBook(where: {title: {eq: "A Game of Thrones"}}) {
    title
    author {
      name
    }
  }
}

Result

{
  "allBook": [
    {
      "title": "A Game of Thrones",
      "author": {
        "name": "George. R. R. Martin"
      }
    }
  ]
}

In a similar fashion, the author field would also have a filter type:

Input

{
  allBook(where: {author: {name: {eq: "George R.R. Martin"}}}) {
    title
    author {
      name
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "allBook": [
    {
      "title": "A Game of Thrones",
      "author": {
        "name": "George R. R. Martin"
      }
    },
    {
      "title": "A Storm of Swords",
      "author": {
        "name": "George R. R. Martin"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Which comparator functions exist depend on the field type. For instance, a number field will have the comparators eq, neq, gt, gte, lt and lte, while a boolean field will only have eq and neq.

In addition to filtering on a per-field basis, document types have additional filters available under the _ field: references and is_draft:

Input

{
  allBook(where: {_: {references: "jrr-tolkien"}}) {
    title
    author {
      name
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "allBook": [
    {
      "title": "The Lord of the Rings",
      "author": {
        "name": "J. R. R. Tolkien"
      }
    }
  ]
}

For a full overview of the available filters, see the GraphQL filter reference section down below.

You can sort on multiple fields on your top-level documents. You can also sort on your nested objects.

Input

{
  allBook(sort: [ { title: ASC }, { published: DESC } ]) {
    title
  }
}

Result

{
  "allBook": [
    {
      "title": "A Game of Thrones",
      "author": {
        "name": "George. R. R. Martin"
      }
    },
    {
      "title": "The Fellowship of the Ring",
      "author": {
        "name": "J. R. R. Tolkien"
      }
    }
  ]
}

We support pagination in the form of the take and skip concept. Pagination can easily be achieved like this:

Input

{
  allBook(limit: 10, offset: 10) {
    title
  }
}

Result

{
  "allBook": [
    {
      "title": "The Two Towers",
      "author": {
        "name": "J. R. R. Tolkien"
      }
    },
    {
      "title": "The Return of the King",
      "author": {
        "name": "J. R. R. Tolkien"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The schemas for Sanity Studio are a bit more flexible than what GraphQL is able to represent. That means that we can't promise that you'll be able to deploy a GraphQL API without any changes to your Sanity projects. Therefore, you may have to do a few changes (usually these are backward-compatible and do not require any data migration).

You may find that “anonymous“ object types have to be given a name and declared in the top-level scope. Take this example:

// schemas/blogPost.js
import {defineType} from 'sanity'

export default defineType({
  name: 'blogPost',
  title: 'Blog post',
  type: 'document',
  fields: [
    // ... other fields ...
    {
      name: 'sponsor',
      title: 'Sponsor',
      type: 'object',
      fields: [
        {
          name: 'name',
          title: 'Name',
          type: 'string'
        },
        {
          name: 'url',
          title: 'URL',
          type: 'url'
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
})

In the code above, the sponsor field is an object type declared inline. This means it cannot be used outside of the blogPost type. This is not compatible with GraphQL – all object types have to be defined in a global scope. To fix this, you should move the sponsor declaration to a separate file and import it into your schema explicitly, then have the sponsor field refer to it by name.

Example:

// schemas/blogPost.js
import {defineType} from 'sanity'

export default defineType({
  name: 'blogPost',
  title: 'Blog post',
  type: 'document',
  fields: [
    // ... other fields ...
    {
      name: 'sponsor',
      title: 'Sponsor',
      type: 'sponsor'
    }
  ]
})

// schemas/sponsor.js
import {defineType} from 'sanity'

export default defineType({
  name: 'sponsor',
  title: 'Sponsor',
  type: 'object',
  fields: [
    {
      name: 'name',
      title: 'Name',
      type: 'string'
    },
    {
      name: 'url',
      title: 'URL',
      type: 'url'
    }
  ]
})

GraphQL APIs are deployed using the Sanity CLI tool. In the simplest case, running sanity graphql deploy in your Sanity Studio project folder is enough to get started - it will use the default settings and deploy the API to the project ID and dataset configured in your sanity.config.ts file.

You can deploy multiple APIs per project/dataset with different API configurations. To do so, you will want to either edit or create a sanity.cli.ts file (or sanity.cli.js if you prefer not to use TypeScript) in your Sanity Studio project folder.

The configuration file should export a configuration object containing a graphql key, which is an array of GraphQL API definitions. Here is an example configuration file:

// sanity.cli.ts
import {defineCliConfig} from 'sanity/cli'

export default defineCliConfig({
  graphql: [
    {
      playground: false,
      tag: 'experiment',
      workspace: 'staging',
      id: 'schema-experiment',
    },
  ]
})

In the example above, we are telling the CLI:

• We do not want a playground to be deployed for this API.
• We want to use the custom tag "experiment," which allows us to deploy multiple APIs for a single dataset.
• We want to use the workspace with the id "staging" from the studio configuration file. This allows us to use different project IDs, datasets, schemas, and similar.
• We want the ID of this GraphQL API to be "schema-experiment." If multiple GraphQL APIs are defined, this lets us deploy specific ones by using the --api flag.

Running sanity graphql deploy from your Sanity Studio project folder will now deploy all of the configured APIs from the CLI configuration.

We also support deploying multiple endpoints of the GraphQL schema to the same dataset by using the tag option in the CLI configuration file. This tag will be the last segment in the endpoint URL. This will let you test schema changes without breaking existing applications. If you don't specify any tag, the tag will be default.

Since we provide a way to deploy multiple GraphQL endpoints, you can use this CLI command to list all your existing endpoints:

sanity graphql list

GraphQL APIs have the option to deploy a "playground". This is an interactive GraphQL user interface that will allow you to more easily run/test queries. This is handy for development, but might not necessarily be something you want to deploy in production - which is why it is configurable. Do note that users can still run an introspection query to discover the properties of the schema without the playground being deployed, however.

If you want to enable/disable this feature, it can be done by using the boolean playground flag in the GraphQL CLI configuration.

GraphQL queries can be executed against the API or API CDN.

• API is recommended in development environments or for use cases where you need the latest content to be immediately available.
• API CDN is recommended for most use cases to return faster results and scale for high-volume traffic.

The subdomain of your query URL directs the request to the API or API CDN:

https://<yourProjectId>.apicdn.sanity.io/v2023-08-01/graphql/<dataset>/<tag>

Perspectives allow your GraphQL queries to run against an alternate view of the content in your dataset. You can set a perspective by adding the query parameter perspective to your request. The available options are:

• published: The default option if no perspective is set. Excludes all unpublished changes from your results.
• raw: Returns drafts, versions, and published content side-by-side for authenticated requests.
• previewDrafts: Treats all draft documents and in-flight changes as if they were published.

https://<yourProjectId>.apicdn.sanity.io/v2025-02-19/graphql/<dataset>/<tag>?perspective=raw

Content Source Maps (CSM) is an open specification by Sanity that enables the embedding of source metadata with your content, and lays the foundation for powerful features such as Visual Editing.

To use CSM with GraphQL, add the query parameter resultSourceMap=true to your request.

https://<yourProjectId>.apicdn.sanity.io/v2025-02-19/graphql/<dataset>/<tag>?resultSourceMap=true

The CSM metadata will then be returned in the sanitySourceMap extension in the response:

{
  "data": {
    "allPost": [
      {
        "title": "GraphQL CSM"
      }
    ]
  },
  "extensions": {
    "sanitySourceMap": {
      "documents": [
        {
          "_id": "75bbbd60-0aa9-4b20-9c00-0b40cb010ff6"
        },
      ],
      "paths": [
        "$['title']"
      ],
      "mappings": {
        "$['allPost'][0]['title']": {
          "source": {
            "document": 0,
            "path": 0,
            "type": "documentValue"
          },
          "type": "value"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

For an example of how to use Content Source Maps to implement Visual Editing using GraphQL you can visit these repositories which demonstrates how to set things up in Next.JS:

• Sanity Presentation with Next.JS and GraphQL – App router
• Sanity Presentation with Next.JS and GraphQL – Pages router

The GraphQL API generally has the same rules as the GROQ API – dataset visibility is respected. Authenticated users see only the documents they have access to.

However, remember that your GraphQL schema is public, so all types and fields will be introspectable by anonymous users.

Mutations are not exposed through the GraphQL API but rather through our powerful Mutation API.

• Equals: field { eq: "" }
• Not equals: field { neq: "" }
• In: field { in: [ "apple", "banana", "pineapple" ] }
• Not in: field { nin: [ "apple", "banana", "pineapple" ] }
• Matches: field { matches: "" }

• Equals: field { eq: "" }
• Not equals: field { neq: "" }
• Greater than: field { gt: 42 }
• Greater than or equal: field { gte: 42 }
• Lesser than: field { lt: 42 }
• Lesser than or equal: field { lte: 42 }

• Equals: field { eq: 42.0 }
• Not equals: field { neq: 42.0 }
• Greater than: field { gt: 42.0 }
• Greater than or equal: field { gte: 42.0 }
• Lesser than: field { lt: 42.0 }
• Lesser than or equal: field { lte: 42.0 }

• Equals: field { eq: true|false }
• Not equals: field { neq: true|false }

The schema generator will generate filtering types for your documents. It will provide filtering options for most fields defined in your schema. On top-level documents, it provides some special filters which can be accessed through _.

• References: field { references: "jrr-tolkien" }
• Is draft: field { is_draft: true }

Unfortunately, we don't provide any filtering for your array fields yet.

The schema generator will expose a <your-type-name>Raw field, which gives you all Portable Text content in raw JSON. It will not resolve references by default, but if you use one of our source plugins for Gatsby or Gridsome, there are arguments you can pass to resolve references.

You can explicitly deprecate fields in your GraphQL APIs by using the deprecated property in schema-type definitions:

Input

export const name = defineField({
  name: 'firstName',
  type: 'string',
  description: `The person's first name`,
  deprecated: {
    reason: 'Use the name field instead'
  }
})

GraphQL schema

{
  "name": "type",
  "description": "The person's first name",
  "args": [],
  "type": {
    "kind": "SCALAR",
    "name": "String",
    "ofType": null
  },
  "isDeprecated": true,
  "deprecationReason": "Use fullName and lastName instead"
}

Since the schema is generated in Node.js instead of in a browser environment, certain imported modules might cause issues. Things that reference the window in a global context are a prime example. If you encounter issues, we'd be interested in hearing which modules cause problems to see if we can work around them. We invite you to reach out to us in our Slack channel.

When a GraphQL API has already been deployed, and you want to deploy a new version, the Sanity CLI tool will generate a new API definition and compare it with the previously deployed version. If any changes are considered breaking or dangerous, the CLI will warn and ask for confirmation before deploying. In a CI environment, the CLI will exit with a non-zero exit code and fail the build. You can use the --dry-run flag to only check for breaking/dangerous changes (that is, without deploying the changes), and the --force flag if you are sure you want to deploy even with breaking changes. The rules for determining breaking/dangerous changes are defined in the findBreakingChanges and findDangerousChanges of the graphql npm package. Note that this is currently considered an implementation detail and may change.