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Ariadne 0.20

· 4 min read

Ariadne 0.20 has been released!

This release removes support for Python 3.7, adds Open Telemetry extension, deprecates Open Tracing and Apollo Tracing extensions.

It also includes bugfixes, new configuration options and updated GraphQL extensions that should perform better than previous ones in asynchronous servers.

Dropped Python 3.7 support​

Python 3.7 reaches end of life on 27 June 2023, but we are already experiencing some of Ariadne's tests failing for it due to the dependencies being ahead of us in dropping support.

Ariadne 0.20 drops support for Python 3.7. It may still work on Python 3.7, we will not test against it anymore and bugs and crashes specific to it will not be addressed.

New extensions implementation​

Note: This is a breaking change. See the middleware document for new guide for developers.

In the past Ariadne shipped with both synchronous and asynchronous GraphQL extensions. Our users reported that asynchronous extensions suffered from performance issues, which we've attempted to resolve together with the community through extra configuration options enabling exclusion of specified fields from tracing, but this didn't lead to noticeable improvements.

We've received an important tip from Christoph Zwerschke, developer of the GraphQL-core 3 library which powers Ariadne's GraphQL implementation. In short, using asynchronous middleware resulted in every GraphQL field becoming asynchronous, even those excluded from tracing. Async/await in Python is generally fast enough, but it's overhead is non-negligible, especially for thousands of calls that happen during GraphQL query execution.

Ariadne 0.20 adds a benchmarks suite to the project. This suite allowed us to measure the performance hit on no-op asynchronous GraphQL extension (around 1.66 times slower than baseline query execution on Python 3.11).

In this release we have also dropped separate implementations for asynchronous and synchronous extensions. Ariadne's GraphQL extensions are now always synchronous, but in scenarios where the GraphQL resolver or its return value is asynchronous, those extensions return asynchronous closure for GraphQL's query executor to evaluate.

Quick results from last benchmarks are:

  • 1x: GraphQL query execution without any extensions enabled.
  • 1.1x slower: GraphQL query execution with single no-op extension enabled.
  • 1.31x slower: GraphQL query execution with single extension enabled, using the OpenTelemetry extension.

We are happy with those gains and hope that our community will share our optimism at this change, even if the extensions system becomes more complex for extension developers.

Documentation for extensions and middleware was updated accordingly to explain the performance pitfall of using async extensions and new way to implement extensions that support both async and sync resolvers.

Migrating existing projects to new extensions​

To update your project to use new extensions:

  • replace OpenTracingSync with OpenTracing.
  • replace opentracing_extension_sync with opentracing_extension.
  • replace ApolloTracingSync with ApolloTracing.

ExtensionSync base class was also removed from Ariadne. Please use Extension as base class for custom extensions. See the middleware document for the guide for new middlewares what support both async and sync execution.

Deprecated Open Tracing and Apollo Tracing​

The Open Tracing standard has been deprecated and is superseded by the Open Telemetry.

Apollo Tracing was deprecated by Apollo, with new a APM solution available but not supported by Ariadne.

Both of those extensions will be dropped in future release of Ariadne.

New features​

Ariadne's ASGI and WSGI applications now implement new query_validator option that enables customization of GraphQL query validation process.

Added OpenTelemetry and opentelemetry_extension extensions for enabling the Open Telemetry APM for GraphQL servers. Those are importable from ariadne.tracing.opentelemetry.

Bugs fixed​

Fixed ERROR message in GraphQL-WS protocol having invalid payload type. This error occurred in a limited number of cases but was still a pain point for scenarios where Ariadne was used for GraphQL subscriptions.

Ariadne's GraphQL query cost validator did not handle the inline fragments. This was reported and fixed by our amazing friends at Saleor!

make_executable_schema would raise an error if GraphQL SDL passed to it contained field(arg: InputType = null). This was corrected.

GraphiQL2's default template shipped with Ariadne used development builds of React.js. This template was updated to use production builds instead.

Changelog​

  • Dropped support for Python 3.7.
  • Added OpenTelemetry and opentelemetry_extension extension, importable form ariadne.tracing.opentelemetry.
  • Added query_validator option to ASGI and WSGI GraphQL applications that enables customization of query validation step.
  • Fixed ERROR message in GraphQL-WS protocol having invalid payload type.
  • Fixed query cost validator incorrect handling of inline fragments.
  • Fixed make_executable_schema error when null is used as default value for input typed field argument.
  • Updated default GraphiQL2 template to use production build of React.js.
  • Removed ExtensionSync. Extension now supports both async and sync contexts.
  • Removed OpenTracingSync and opentracing_extension_sync. OpenTracing and opentracing_extension now support both async and sync contexts.
  • Removed ApolloTracingSync. ApolloTracing now supports both async and sync contexts.