How to handle delete mutations with optimistic UI in Apollo?

Question

https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/api/react-apollo.html#graphql-mutation-options-optimisticResponse

There's plenty of documentation and tutorials showing use of the mutation update and optimisticResponse properties involving adding things, but I haven't seen any involving deletions.

I'm not exactly sure how that code should look. With a create mutation, you want to add the new item to the Apollo cache via update and add a temporary copy to the UI using optimisticResponse . But with a deletion, it doesn't make sense to "show" the deletion since it's the absence of data.

This is what I've got in a method in my Vue component, which is partly correct:

async handleDelete(trackId: number) {
  const result = await this.$apollo.mutate({
    mutation: require('@/graphql/delete-tracks.gql'),
    variables: {
      ids: [trackId],
    },
    update: store => {
      const data: { getTracks: TrackList } | null = store.readQuery({
        query: getTracksQuery,
        variables: this.queryVars,
      });

      if (data && data.getTracks) {
        data.getTracks.data = data.getTracks.data.filter(
          (track: Track) => track.id !== trackId
        );
        --data.getTracks.total;
      }

      store.writeQuery({
        query: getTracksQuery,
        variables: this.queryVars,
        data,
      });
    },
    optimisticResponse: {},
  });

  console.log('result:', result);
},

I figured out that I basically need to remove the deleted item from the Apollo cache, and that part seems to work great. Though the visual removal doesn't happen immediately, since there's no optimisticResponse . That's the part I have absolutely no idea how to go about writing.

Answer 1

Got it, it was much simpler than I thought. I just didn't quite understand how optimisticResponse came into play with update .

optimisticResponse: {
  __typename: 'Mutation',
  deleteTracks: [trackId],
},

So the update method will take this result from optimisticResponse and remove that track ID from the cache. update will be called a second time with the GraphQL server response, and the Apollo cache will be reconciled.