No Form Fields Available when Building with Gatsby

[pseelinger]

Description

Using GraphQL IDE inside the CMS:

Using GraphiQL during gatsby develop

Since upgrading to v0.13.0, form fields return from the GraphQL endpoint fine in the admin, but using gatsby-source-wordpress, any attempt to fetch formFields returns an empty array. I tried directly hitting my GraphQL endpoint using Httpie to make sure this wasn't an authentication issue, and it returns the fields just fine.

Steps to reproduce

Install the plugins below and test the following queries. The frontend of the site should use Gatsby with gatsby-source-wordpress installed:

Backend Query:

  gfForms {
    edges {
      node {
        formFields {
          edges {
            node {
              type
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Frontend Query:

  allWpGfForm {
    edges {
      node {
        formFields {
          nodes {
            type
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Additional context

Tested this with just WPGraphQL, WP Gatsby, and WP GraphQL for Gravity Forms activated on the site.

Plugin Version

0.13.0.1

Gravity Forms Version

2.9.2

WordPress Version

6.7.1

WPGraphQL Version

1.31.1

Additional enviornmental details

PHP version: 8.3.16
WP Gatsby: 2.3.3
gatsby-source-wordpress: 7.14.0

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

• Yes

Please confirm that you have disabled ALL plugins except for Gravity Forms, WPGraphQL, and WPGraphQL for Gravity Forms

• Yes
• My issue is with a specific 3rd-party plugin.

[justlevine]

Thanks for reporting this @pseelinger !

Please take a look at the debugging steps mentioned in this comment: #448 (comment)

While idk if the issues are related, what is related is how Gatsby hides all the pertinent debug information. Hopefully those logs should be able to point to whatever is tripping Gatsby up 🤞

[pseelinger]

Thanks for the quick response @justlevine

I've attached my two queries below using the debug steps from Gatsby. The backend query does work if I hit it from GraphQL playground. I'll keep looking into this, but maybe this note is relevant?

Note: A common cause of this problem is that you're using ACF and you've named multiple fields with the same name but in different field groups. Identify conflicting field names and rename them.

node-list-query-backend.txt
node-list-query-frontend.txt

[justlevine]

The backend query does work if I hit it from GraphQL playground.

What versions (of both WPGraphQL and WPGraphQL for GF) were the last to work in Gatsby.

If there's backend error, then that means the issue is probably with WPGatsby (or gatsby-source-wordpress) automagical transformations. Hoping that narrowing down the version diff will point to an obvious conflict.

maybe this note is relevant?

Note: A common cause of this problem is that you're using ACF and you've named multiple fields with the same name but in different field groups. Identify conflicting field names and rename them.

I'm hoping that for the sake of all this debugging you've disabled all WordPress plugins/custom code except for WPGraphQL, WPGraphQL for GF, and WPGatsby. So it shouldn't be a problem ;)

[pseelinger]

What versions (of both WPGraphQL and WPGraphQL for GF) were the last to work in Gatsby.

Form fields appear using WPGraphQL 1.31.1 with WPGraphQL for Gravity Forms 0.12.6.1, as well with any version of WP GraphQL from 1.26. I only start to see this after hitting 0.13.0 on WPGraphQL for Gravity Forms. I tried a couple different combinations with 0.13.0.1 and got the same issue. I'm also aware gatsby-source-wordpress hasn't gotten significant updates in a while and might be the real source of the issue as this plugin appears to be outputting data correctly to everything else.

I'm hoping that for the sake of all this debugging you've disabled all WordPress plugins/custom code except for WPGraphQL, WPGraphQL for GF, and WPGatsby. So it shouldn't be a problem ;)

Oh definitely. I have a separate repo set up only with those plugins to reproduce the issue. My thought was maybe there was a conflict in Gravity Forms definitions, but looking through the types in the two queries I posted here I don't see any.

[justlevine]

What versions (of both WPGraphQL and WPGraphQL for GF) were the last to work in Gatsby.

Form fields appear using WPGraphQL 1.31.1 with WPGraphQL for Gravity Forms 0.12.6.1, as well with any version of WP GraphQL from 1.26. I only start to see this after hitting 0.13.0 on WPGraphQL for Gravity Forms.

This sadly (but unsurprisingly) tracks, as v0.13.0 refactored the connection resolvers to adopt the Connection Resolver API that were made in WPGraphQL v1.26.0, which was already pretty finickiy in WPGatsby.

Also adds context to #448 , which seems to have been introduced in the same timeframe involving a similarly-refactored ConnectionResolver.

Next step is figuring out what the actual source of the issue is (really hard to debug anything related to gatsby, especially without a particular error message to look at), and only then will I be able to say if this is something we can fix on our side or if WPGatsby has finally EOLd.

Any chance you have something in you WordPress debug.log, does gatsby's response change if you enable WPGraphQL Debugging (in settings or wp-config.php)?

[pseelinger]

So nothing in the debug log other than an 8.3 warning about Gatsby's action monitor, which I already tested fixing and doesn't seem to have an effect. That is until I turned on GRAPHQL_DEBUG. After turning that on I get two things:

[05-Feb-2025 13:02:48 UTC] PHP Deprecated:  preg_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /Users/patrickseelinger/Sites/gatsby-test-cms/web/app/plugins/wp-graphql/src/Router.php on line 278

[05-Feb-2025 13:03:02 UTC] PHP Warning:  Undefined array key "GfFieldChoice" in /Users/patrickseelinger/Sites/gatsby-test-cms/web/app/plugins/wp-graphql/vendor/webonyx/graphql-php/src/Type/Schema.php on line 437

This reminds me I probably should have mentioned this is a roots.io Bedrock WordPress setup. I don't think that would have any effect, but I should have mentioned it before.

[pseelinger]

Finally got a sort of solution for this. If you enable hard caching for WordPress data, you can see that form fields are fetched correctly and present in the cached data. It looks like Gatsby only looks at the node ID when creating connections. During the source nodes step, it only creates nodes if they're queryable at the root level, which form fields are not. Since it never creates a node, Gatsby assumes the node ID referenced by the form is invalid and so returns nothing for it.

My workaround for now is to patch gatsby-source-wordpress and essentially force it to create the form field nodes. I can say, though, this isn't a bug with this plugin. I'm also not sure I'd consider it a bug in gatsby-source-wordpress, but more of an unaccounted for use case. If I can find a way to generalize my solution to other plugins following a similar data structure, I'll see about getting a feature request in with the Gatsby folks.

I've attached the patch I'm using for now for anyone else running into this. At the very least it'll let you keep getting updates for this plugin if you're using Gatsby.

gatsby-source-wordpress+7.15.0.patch

[justlevine]

Thanks @pseelinger (and sorry I missed your reply all those month ago) 🚀.

Leaving this open until I can add a docs reference somewhere.

[justlevine]

🤖 Automated Triage

Classification: type: bug 🐛 · priority: high 🚨
Agent-feasible: Yes — regression with clear reproduction steps and a specific version boundary (v0.13.0).
Estimated effort: Agent medium · Human low

Summary: Since v0.13.0, formFields returns an empty array when queried via gatsby-source-wordpress, despite working correctly in the admin GraphQL IDE. A workaround is already documented and the issue is confirmed. The root cause likely lies in how the plugin exposes field data to introspection/schema queries used by Gatsby's source plugin versus direct admin queries.

Next steps: Ready for planning loop. Agent should diff the formFields connection registration changes between v0.12.x and v0.13.0 to identify what broke schema introspection for Gatsby sourcing. Link any related PR that introduced the regression.