When should I use a Relay GraphQL connection and when a plain list?
Connections
- More powerful and flexible than simple lists.
- Support pagination (forward and back), with cursors.
- Fine-grained mutation support (eg.
RANGE_ADD
, RANGE_DELETE
, NODE_DELETE
, as described in the guide).
- Requires a
first
or last
argument in order to limit the size of the result set.
- Has an
edges
field that provides a place to locate per-edge, edge-specific data.
- A heavier-weight concept, requiring more work to define in the schema.
Lists
- Simple and lightweight.
- No support for pagination (the entire list is always returned).
- No special mutations features for prepending, appending etc (although it is a requested feature).
Which to use?
- Whenever you need pagination, you should use a connection.
- If you need fine-grained control over mutations, you may choose to use a connection, even if you don't need pagination.
- If you want all the items in a connection, you can use
first
with some large number.
- If you want to expose a short list with minimal effort, use a simple list.