Federation: Getting Started

Experimental: not enabled by default, not guaranteed to be stable.

Federation enables you to combine GraphQL services into a single unified data graph. Read more about the core concepts and motivation in the Apollo Federation docs (opens new window).

Lighthouse can act as a federation capable service as described in the Apollo Federation specification (opens new window). It can not serve as a federation gateway (opens new window).

Setup

Add the service provider to your config/app.php:

'providers' => [
    \Nuwave\Lighthouse\Federation\FederationServiceProvider::class,
],

Extends

You have to use @extends in place of extend type to annotate type references. This is because Lighthouse merges type extensions before the final schema is produced, thus they would not be preserved to appear in the federation schema SDL.