gatsby-source-contentful: Fragment for a content-model if not used Develop & Build fails showing error to define GraphQL manually

[warlockdn]

Preliminary Checks

• This issue is not a duplicate. Before opening a new issue, please search existing issues: https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues
• This issue is not a question, feature request, RFC, or anything other than a bug report directly related to Gatsby. Please post those things in GitHub Discussions: https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/discussions

Description

I have been trying to use Contentful with GraphQL. Working just fine until now. Here is a situation things starts to become complicated.

In Contentful I have a space which contains Entries and all entries basically make up multiple websites.

Microsite (Content Model)

• Theme
• Entries
• Meta Data containing s3 bucket name and prefix among other things
• Website Unique Code

Now these Sites can go upto 20-30 sites. Until here everything is fine.

I created multiple Content Models which make up the website, for eg:

• Microsite
• Video Section
• Hero Banner
• Carousel
• Testimonials

In Gatsby Homepage is generated based on the Unique Code from Microsite Content Model that is passed as a Environment Variable and every content-model which is can be used in the website is added as a entry in the page query. For eg:

query {
   siteTitle
   uniqueId
   components {
      ...video
      ...herobanner
      ...carousel
      ...testimonials 
   }
}

fragment video on VideoComponent {
}

fragment herobanner on HeroBannerComponent {
}

.... and so on..

Now the challenge here is video, banner and testimonials are just optional components. It may or may not come based on website requirements and allowing this to be a generic solution.

If I do this way. Gatsby starts saying that if a field is optional I need to manually define it and tell gatsby explicitly to create the GraphQL schema. Now if this was a general site then yes I could have done it. But since this is Contentful the explicit way of defining the schema becomes very difficult. Everything has to be defined manually like Asset etc.

Can you help me understand how can this be tackled

Reproduction Link

NA

Steps to Reproduce

NA

Expected Result

Need this to be a generic solution. Even if a fragment remains unused Gatsby shouldn't complain.

Actual Result

A Generic solution.

Environment

System:
    OS: macOS 12.0.1
    CPU: (8) x64 Apple M1
    Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 14.17.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.17.4/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.10 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 6.14.14 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.17.4/bin/npm
  Languages:
    Python: 2.7.18 - /usr/bin/python
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 95.0.4638.69
    Edge: 95.0.1020.44
    Safari: 15.1
  npmPackages:
    gatsby: ^3.13.1 => 3.14.2
    gatsby-plugin-google-tagmanager: ^3.14.0 => 3.14.0
    gatsby-plugin-image: ^1.14.0 => 1.14.1
    gatsby-plugin-manifest: ^3.14.0 => 3.14.0
    gatsby-plugin-offline: ^4.14.0 => 4.14.0
    gatsby-plugin-react-helmet: ^4.14.0 => 4.14.0
    gatsby-plugin-s3: ^0.3.8 => 0.3.8
    gatsby-plugin-sass: ^4.14.0 => 4.14.0
    gatsby-plugin-sharp: ^3.14.0 => 3.14.1
    gatsby-plugin-styled-components: ^4.13.0 => 4.13.0
    gatsby-source-contentful: ^5.14.0 => 5.14.0
    gatsby-theme-material-ui: ^4.13.0 => 4.13.0
  npmGlobalPackages:
    gatsby: 3.14.0

Config Flags

No response

[warlockdn]

Any idea anyone ?