Using the GraphQL playground

1. Log into the proposal submission site

   • For STFC: https://devproposal.facilities.rl.ac.uk/

2. Get an authorisation key following one of the options in the “Getting Auth tokens” section below

3. Navigate to the GraphQL playground

   • For STFC: https://devproposal.facilities.rl.ac.uk/graphql

4. In the bottom panel, click HTTP Headers

5. Paste the following, replacing <token> with the token you copied earlier. This needs to include the Bearer prefix

   { "Authorization": "<token>" }

6. Run a test query, for example:

   query { calls { title } }

Getting Auth tokens

There are two types of auth token you can get, your session token, and API tokens.

Your session token requires the least setup and configuration, but will only be able to have the permissions and role you had when you copy it, and will expire. API tokens allow you to mimic requests as an app makes them, don’t expire, but need to be configured with permissions manually.

Getting your session token

1. Sign in to the proposals system

2. Optionally switch role to the one you want to run GraphQL queries as

   1. Click on the person icon at top right hand side of the site

      Open

      

   2. Click on Roles

   3. Click Use next to your desired role

3. Press F12 to open the browser’s dev tools

4. Select the Network tab

5. Refresh the web page to load some GraphQL requests

6. Click on a graphql request

7. Browse to it’s request headers, and copy the value

Open

Getting an API token

1. Switch your role to User Officer

   1. Click on the person icon at top right hand side of the site

      Open

      

   2. Click on Roles

   3. Click Use next to User Officer

2. Navigate to Settings → API Access Token in the sidebar

3. Click on an existing token, or create a new one if needed:

   1. Click Create below the table

   2. Name your token and select the relevant query and mutation permissions

   3. Click Create in the modal

4. Copy the Access Token when it appears, including the Bearer prefix.

Running queries against prod

For <reason not found> issue 193 disabled the prod graphql playground. It’s still useful for debugging to be able to easily run queries against prod though. This section details how to work around that.

• Point your browser at https://devproposal.facilities.rl.ac.uk/graphql like before.

• Assuming you’ve run a query against dev before, that old proposal will still be present. If one isn’t, follow the main “Using the GraphQL playground” section from above.

• The query’s tab within the web page will have an address bar. Remove the “dev” section so the address points to prod: https://proposal.facilities.rl.ac.uk/graphql

  • The playground may start showing “Server cannot be reached” or fail to load a schema/docs now, as the playground is disabled on prod. If you need these to craft a query, do so in a new tab that targets devtab.

• Replace the dev authorisation token with one for prod. See the “Getting Auth tokens” section above.

• Make sure that any query parameters are using prod values. A users account or proposal round will likely have a different id on prod.

• You should now be able to run queries against prod.