How to set a time-based fetch policy in apollo client for graphql queries?

Question

I am trying to use Apollo client to cache Grapql query results. I reviewed the fetch policies from the docs but I could not find a way to use a cache based policy with expiration.
In my code I have:

const client = new ApolloClient({
  link: from([errorLink, httpLink]),
  ssrMode: typeof window === "undefined",
  errorPolicy: "all",
  cache: new InMemoryCache(),
  defaultOptions: {
    watchQuery: {
      fetchPolicy: "cache-first",
    },
    query: {
      fetchPolicy: "cache-first",
    },
  },
});

The cache-first policy does what I am looking for but it does not expire. Is there a way to make the policy dynamic?

Answer 1

It is kind of hard to understand your use case, as a lot of details are missing.

However, I think what your are looking for is the cache evict functionality. Put that into a setTimeout to clear the cached data after a given timeout.

If you want to clear the cache only if the data has not been accessed for a while, you need to combine it with a clearTimeout .

I dont think there is a solution with just a fetch policy, they are rather unflexible.