GraphQL Bigint

A long integer type for graphql-js. This implementation gives you 53 bits rather than the default 32-bit GraphQLInt.

The problem

The GraphQL spec limits its Int type to 32-bits. Maybe you've seen this error before:

GraphQLError: Argument "num" has invalid value 9007199254740990.
              Expected type "Int", found 9007199254740990.

Why? 64-bits would be too large for JavaScript's 53-bit limit. According to Lee Byron, a 52-bit integer spec would have been "too weird" see this issue. The spec therefore has 32-bit integers to ensure portability to languages that can't represent 64-bit integers. However, if you don't care about that, and you just want to use JavaScript's special 53-bit integers, you can use this scalar type instead!

Usage

$ npm install graphql-type-bigint

Use it the same as any other scalar type, either input or output.

const Bigint = require('graphql-type-bigint');

const SomeType = new GraphQLObjectType({
  name: 'SomeType',
  fields: {
    numberField: {
      type: Bigint,
      // this would throw an error with the GraphQLInt
      resolve: () => Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER,
    },
  },
});