When developing in React, using a type system (like Typescript or Flow) can be a great help. You can be sure that your props and state are what you expect, at build-time, and code your components to match.

But what happens when you’re calling to an API to fetch some data, and the shape of that data is what really matters? Maybe the data get passed as props to a child component? You can create types for this, sure, but are they correct? Probably not! Or at least, probably not for long! Things change. Wouldn’t it be great if your types changed too?

In this post, we’re going to take a simple component from zero type awareness to fully typed, with local variables and GraphQL queries included, with a simple workflow. Grab a cup of coffee and a snack, and let’s see how this we can use GraphQL to generate type-safe components in React.