GraphQL HTML Scalar Type

A GraphQL scalar type that will sanitize an HTML string using sanitize-html.

Why Use This?

You may not actually need the GraphQLHTML scalar! Ideally, you'll have already taken steps to prevent malicious HTML from making it to a database. If you can trust that any HTML content your GraphQL server is sending to the client is safe, you can simply use the String scalar.

However, here are some examples of when you'll want to use a custom HTML scalar over String:

• You're consuming user supplied HTML content from a 3rd-party and you can't trust it's safe.
• User supplied content has been previously sanitized and considered "safe", but you need to remove certain HTML elements.
• You need to modify any HTML content in any way supported by sanitize-html across several resolvers.

Install

$ npm install --save graphql graphql-scalar-html

If not already installed in your project, make sure to install graphql — it's a peer dependency of this project.

Getting Started

Let's assume we already have a simple Apollo GraphQL server set up, with a root comments query that responds with an array of user supplied comments.

import { ApolloServer, gql } from 'apollo-server';

const typeDefs = gql`
  type Query {
    comments: [Comment]
  }

  type Comment {
    id: ID!
    body: String
  }
`;

const resolvers = {
  Query: {
    comments: async (parent, args, context, info) => {
      return Promise.resolve([
        { id: 1, body: `Hello, <script>console.log('👻')</script> world!` },
      ]);
    },
  },
};

const server = new ApolloServer({
  typeDefs,
  resolvers,
});

The Comment type includes a body field containing the user supplied HTML content. If we haven't taken other steps to prevent malicious HTML from being saved to our database, we can sanitize the response with the HTML scalar.

Let's add graphql-scalar-html to our code, changing body from a String to the new HTML scalar type, and adding the custom HTML scalar to our schema:

  import { ApolloServer, gql } from 'apollo-server';
+ import GraphQLHTML from 'graphql-scalar-html';
+ // const GraphQLHTML = require('graphql-scalar-html');

  const typeDefs = gql`
    type Query {
      comments: [Comment]
    }

    type Comment {
      id: ID!
-     body: String
+     body: HTML
    }

+   scalar HTML
  `;

We also need to define the HTML scalar as a new GraphQLHTML instance in our resolvers (see Apollo's "Custom Scalars" documentation for more information).

  const resolvers = {
    Query: {
      comments: async (parent, args, context, info) => {
        return Promise.resolve([
          { id: 1, body: `<p>Hello, world<script>console.log('👻')</script>!</p>` },
        ]);
      },
    },
+   HTML: new GraphQLHTML({
+     allowedTags: [...GraphQLHTML.defaults.allowedTags, 'img'],
+   }),
  };

  const server = new ApolloServer({
    typeDefs,
    resolvers,
  });

If you've used sanitize-html before, the options argument of GraphQLHTML should look familiar - in fact, the options you'll set here are passed directly to sanitize-html.

Not using Apollo Server or graphql-tools makeExecutableSchema?

So you like doing things the hard way? 😜 GraphQLHTML can be used with GraphQL.js directly! See this example implementation for more information.

Contributing

graphql-scalar-html is maintained by John Flesch. Contributions are very much welcome!

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2019 John Flesch john@fles.ch (https://github.com/flesch)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.