GraphQL Query Complexity Limitation

In addition to the rate limit imposed on the API key, GraphQL requests must adhere to complexity limitations. Any extensive queries that surpass the complexity upper threshold will be declined. To pass query validation, GraphQL requests must satisfy the following two conditions:

• List fields must include the first parameter to specify the maximum number of items to be returned in the response.
• Ensure that queries have a size of fewer than 50,000 fields. Refer to the examples below for guidance on calculating query size.

Example 1: List fields

{  
	getOrder(id: "ORDER-ID") {  
		status  
		tags {  
			id  
			name  
		}  
	}  
}

This query is invalid since tags is a list field and first parameter needs to be supplied. A valid query should be:

{  
	getOrder(id: "ORDER-ID") {  
		status  
		tags (first: 100) {  
			id  
			name  
		}  
	}  
}

To determine whether a field is a list, consult the documentation or test it using the editor in the playground.

Example 2: Calculate the number of fields on a simple query

query Query1 {
	getFundSubscription(id: "FUND-ID") {
		id
		name
		currency
	}
}

The JSON-formatted response for Query1 should resemble the example below, consistently containing four fields, resulting in a query size of 4.

{
	"getFundSubscription" {
		"id": "FUND-ID"
		"name": "Demo fund"
		"currency": "$"
	}
}

Example 3: Calculate the number of fields on query with list field

query Query2 {
	getFundSubscription(id: "FUND-ID") {
		id
		name
		currency
		admins(first: 10) {
			email
			firstName
			lastName
		}
	}
}

In the context of Query2 outlined above, the request is made to retrieve the first 10 administrators of the fund. For each administrator, 3 fields are extracted. The corresponding response segment of the query is illustrated below, comprising a total of 31 fields, which include the admins field itself.

{
	...
	"admins": [
		{
			"email": "[email protected]",
			"firstName": "Harry",
			"lastName": "Williams"
		},
		{
			"email": "[email protected]",
			"firstName": "Jenny",
			"lastName": "Yoo"
		},
		...
	]
}

The Query2 response hence can have 31 more fields in comparison to Query1 so the size of it is 4 + 31 = 35

Essentially, the size of a list field can be calculated as 1 + (number of items) * (size of each item), with the number of items being specified by the first parameter.

Example 4: More complex query

query Query3 {
	getFundSubscription(id: "FUND-ID") {
		id
		name
		currency
		admins(first: 10) {
			email
			firstName
			lastName
		}
		orders(first: 50) {
			id
			status
			contacts(first: 10) {
				email
				firstName
				lastName
			}
			tags(first: 20) {
				name
			}
		}
	}
}

The orders field adds 1 + 50 * (2 + (1 + 10 * 3) + (1 + 20)) = 2701 to the query size and make Query3 having a size of 35 + 2701 = 2736.