Django

Strawberry comes with a basic Django integration . It provides a view that you can use to serve your GraphQL schema:

from django.urls import path
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt

from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView

from api.schema import schema

urlpatterns = [
    path("graphql/", csrf_exempt(GraphQLView.as_view(schema=schema))),
]

Strawberry only provides a GraphQL view for Django, Strawberry GraphQL Django provides integration with the models. import strawberry_django should do the same as import strawberry.django if both libraries are installed.

You’d also need to add strawberry_django to the INSTALLED_APPS of your project, this is needed to provide the template for the GraphiQL interface.

Options

The GraphQLView accepts the following arguments:

schema : mandatory, the schema created by strawberry.Schema .
graphql_ide : optional, defaults to "graphiql" , allows to choose the GraphQL IDE interface (one of graphiql , apollo-sandbox or pathfinder ) or to disable it by passing None .
allow_queries_via_get : optional, defaults to True , whether to enable queries via GET requests
multipart_uploads_enabled : optional, defaults to False , controls whether to enable multipart uploads. Please make sure to consider the security implications mentioned in the GraphQL Multipart Request Specification when enabling this feature.

Deprecated options

The following options are deprecated and will be removed in a future release:

json_encoder : optional JSON encoder, defaults to DjangoJSONEncoder , will be used to serialize the data.
json_dumps_params : optional dictionary of keyword arguments to pass to the json.dumps call used to generate the response. To get the most compact JSON representation, you should specify {"separators": (",", ":")} , defaults to None .

You can extend the view and override encode_json to customize the JSON encoding process.

Extending the view

We allow to extend the base GraphQLView , by overriding the following methods:

def get_context(self, request: HttpRequest, response: HttpResponse) -> Context
def get_root_value(self, request: HttpRequest) -> Optional[RootValue]
def process_result(self, request: Request, result: ExecutionResult) -> GraphQLHTTPResponse
def decode_json(self, data: Union[str, bytes]) -> object
def encode_json(self, data: object) -> str
def render_graphql_ide(self, request: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse

get_context

get_context allows to provide a custom context object that can be used in your resolver. You can return anything here, by default we return a StrawberryDjangoContext object.

import strawberry


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    def user(self, info: strawberry.Info) -> str:
        return str(info.context.request.user)

or in case of a custom context:

import strawberry
from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView
from django.http import HttpRequest, HttpResponse


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def get_context(self, request: HttpRequest, response: HttpResponse):
        return {"example": 1}


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    def example(self, info: strawberry.Info) -> str:
        return str(info.context["example"])

Here we are returning a custom context dictionary that contains only one item called “example”.

Then we use the context in a resolver, the resolver will return “1” in this case.

get_root_value

get_root_value allows to provide a custom root value for your schema, this is probably not used a lot but it might be useful in certain situations.

Here’s an example:

import strawberry
from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView
from django.http import HttpRequest


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def get_root_value(self, request: HttpRequest):
        return Query(name="Patrick")


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    name: str

Here we are returning a Query where the name is “Patrick”, so we when requesting the field name we’ll return “Patrick” in this case.

process_result

process_result allows to customize and/or process results before they are sent to the clients. This can be useful logging errors or hiding them (for example to hide internal exceptions).

It needs to return an object of GraphQLHTTPResponse and accepts the request and the execution results.

from strawberry.http import GraphQLHTTPResponse
from strawberry.types import ExecutionResult
from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView
from django.http import HttpRequest


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def process_result(
        self, request: HttpRequest, result: ExecutionResult
    ) -> GraphQLHTTPResponse:
        data: GraphQLHTTPResponse = {"data": result.data}

        if result.errors:
            data["errors"] = [err.formatted for err in result.errors]

        return data

In this case we are doing the default processing of the result, but it can be tweaked based on your needs.

decode_json

decode_json allows to customize the decoding of HTTP and WebSocket JSON requests. By default we use json.loads but you can override this method to use a different decoder.

from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView
from typing import Union
import orjson


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def decode_json(self, data: Union[str, bytes]) -> object:
        return orjson.loads(data)

Make sure your code raises json.JSONDecodeError or a subclass of it if the JSON cannot be decoded. The library shown in the example above, orjson , does this by default.

encode_json

encode_json allows to customize the encoding of HTTP and WebSocket JSON responses. By default we use json.dumps but you can override this method to use a different encoder.

import json
from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def encode_json(self, data: object) -> str:
        return json.dumps(data, indent=2)

render_graphql_ide

In case you need more control over the rendering of the GraphQL IDE than the graphql_ide option provides, you can provide the graphql/graphiql.html template, which will be used instead of the configured IDE.

Alternatively, you can override the render_graphql_ide method:

from strawberry.django.views import GraphQLView
from django.http import HttpResponse, HttpRequest
from django.template.loader import render_to_string


class MyGraphQLView(GraphQLView):
    def render_graphql_ide(self, request: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse:
        content = render_to_string("myapp/my_graphql_ide_template.html")

        return HttpResponse(content)

Async Django

Strawberry also provides an async view that you can use with Django 3.1+

from django.urls import path

from strawberry.django.views import AsyncGraphQLView

from api.schema import schema

urlpatterns = [
    path("graphql/", AsyncGraphQLView.as_view(schema=schema)),
]

You’d also need to add strawberry_django to the INSTALLED_APPS of your project, this is needed to provide the template for the GraphiQL interface.

Important Note: Django ORM and Async Context

When using AsyncGraphQLView , you may encounter a SynchronousOnlyOperation error if your resolvers access Django’s ORM directly:

django.core.exceptions.SynchronousOnlyOperation: You cannot call this from an async context - use a thread or sync_to_async.

This occurs because Django’s ORM is synchronous by default and cannot be called directly from async contexts like the AsyncGraphQLView . Here are two solutions:

Solution 1: Use the async version of the ORM methods

Instead of using the standard version of the ORM methods, you can usually use an async version, for example, in addition to get Django also provides aget than can be used in an async context:

import strawberry
from django.contrib.auth.models import User


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    @staticmethod
    async def user_name(id: strawberry.ID) -> str:
        # Note: this is a simple example, you'd normally just return
        # a full user instead of making a resolver to get a user's name
        # by id. This is just to explain the async issues with Django :)

        user = await User.objects.aget(id)
        # This would cause SynchronousOnlyOperation error:
        # user = User.objects.get(id)

        return user.name

You can find all the supported methods in the Asynchronous support guide on Django’s website.

Solution 2: Use `sync_to_async`

While some ORM methods have an async equivalent, not all of them do, in that case you can wrap your ORM operations with Django’s sync_to_async :

import strawberry
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from asgiref.sync import sync_to_async


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    @strawberry.field
    async def users(self) -> list[str]:
        # This would cause SynchronousOnlyOperation error:
        # return [user.username for user in User.objects.all()]

        # Correct way using sync_to_async:
        users = await sync_to_async(list)(User.objects.all())

        return [user.username for user in users]

Solution 3: Use `strawberry_django` (Recommended)

The strawberry_django package automatically handles async/sync compatibility. Use strawberry_django.field instead of strawberry.field :

import strawberry_django
from django.contrib.auth.models import User


@strawberry_django.type(User)
class UserType:
    username: str
    email: str


@strawberry.type
class Query:
    # This automatically works with both sync and async views
    users: list[UserType] = strawberry_django.field()

We recommend using the strawberry_django package for Django ORM integration as it provides automatic async/sync compatibility and additional Django-specific features.