Compound queries - rest

Question

I have a RESTful service that accepts a custom query, like this:
/entities/User?actions=
{
"$link": {
"entityType": "Manager",
"entity": {
"name": "John Smith"
},
"linkName": "managers",
"backLinkName": "account",
"$set": {
"propertyName": "aclWrite",
"propertyValue": {
"$ref": {
"propertyName": "entityId"
}
}
}
}
}
Which simply means:
Create a new Entity of type User
Create a new Entity of type Manager with the field name, linking the User to be created to this Manager through link name "managers"
Then back-linking the Manager entity to be created to the User with a link name "account" and setting the Manager entity write ACL (Access Control List) to the ID of the User to be created.
I created this query structure because I can't find any suitable Query language that can seem to support such action/procedure.
The question here is are there any Query language that can support such compound action/procedure or can GraphQL handle such?

Answer 1

As a specification, GraphQL doesn't care what fields your schema defines, what arguments those fields take or what your field resolvers do with those arguments. So it's perfectly feasible to design a schema that would let the client compose an equivalent mutation:
mutation {
link(
entityType: "Manager"
entity: {
name: "John Smith"
}
linkName: "managers"
backLinkName: "account"
set: {
propertyName: "aclWrite"
propertyValue: {
ref: {
propertyName: "entityId"
}
}
}
) {
# some fields here to return in the response
}
}
GraphQL does not support references to other nodes inside the same query, so you would still probably want a single mutation whose input mirrored your existing API. That said, using GraphQL for this may still be preferable because of request validation, which is all the more important with complex requests like this. Having an IDE like GraphiQL or GraphQL Playground that lets you write your queries using autocomplete is a big plus too.