toGlobalId/fromGlobalId not working inside React Native

[vincentisambart]

I tried using this library's toGlobalId and fromGlobalId from a React Native application, however I got an error that Buffer is not defined (it's used in src/utils/base64.js). It seems that Buffer is only available from NodeJS...

If you consider that this library should also be available from React Native (or a browser), at least some changes need to be made to base64.js.

In the time being I'll probably just use join/split.

By the way, the reason I was trying to use this library from React Native is to do something similar to http://graphql.org/blog/rest-api-graphql-wrapper/.

[wincent]

Thanks for the report @vincentisambart.

In the time being I'll probably just use join/split.

This is a reasonable approach. Note that the use of base64 encoding is a convention but not a requirement. The main reason we have used base64 historically is to make it clear that the identifiers should be considered opaque, and the client should avoid doing any operations that depend on their internal structure; in many (most?) cases you can write a client without needing the functionality of toGlobalId/fromGlobalId at all. (At the same time, base64 is an easily enough removed form of obfuscation that you can trivially undo if you need to look "inside" an ID for debugging purposes.)

[blackxored]

I ran into exactly the same issue. Any ways to make this cross-platform?

[sibelius]

@vincentisambart how did you solved your problem?

[sibelius]

You can create a simple helper

import { Buffer } from 'buffer';

export type Base64String = string;

export function base64(i: string): Base64String {
  return new Buffer(i, 'utf8').toString('base64');
}

export const toGlobalId = (type: string, id: string): string => {
  return base64([type, id].join(':'));
};