Skip to content
🎤 Builder Talk: The Story Behind Lady Gaga’s Digital Experience – Register now
Get help on Slack

How to Neatly Organize GROQ Queries

2 replies
Last updated: Jul 28, 2021
I have a groq query that works as I need it to but I’m wondering if there is a nicer way to organise it. I have an object to create a group of insights with various options for filtering such as insight type, category etc. Currently I’m using the 
select
function to select the appropriate query string but as I extend the options I’m ending up with more and more nested selects. Here is a reduced example;
"insights": select(
    order == "asc" => select(
        defined(insightType) => select(
            filter == "past" => *[_type == ^.insightType && now() > date]|order(date asc),
            filter == "future" => *[_type == ^.insightType && now() < date]|order(date asc),
            !defined(filter) => *[_type == ^.insightType]|order(date asc)
        )
        ...other options
    )
    order == "desc" => select( ...desc options )
)
Does anyone have any suggestions for a neater way of doing this?
Jul 28, 2021, 8:46 AM
I think this is a pretty clean way to build queries, actually, but I can see how it might get unwieldy.
One way you can potentially improve it (for a slight performance hit, potentially) is to move more stuff into the inner queries. For example, the above could be written:


"insights": select(
    order == "asc" => select(
        defined(insightType) => *[_type == ^.insightType &&
          select(
            filter == "past" => now() > date,
            filter == "future" => now() < date,
            true
          )
        ] | order(date)
        ...other options
    )
    order == "desc" => ...
)
Unfortunately, the same trick cannot be used to refactor 
order()
, because it does not accept arbitrary expressions (yet). But you could use JavaScript fragments for that, e.g.:

"insights": select(
    select(
      defined(insightType) => *[_type == ^.insightType &&
        select(
          filter == "past" => now() > date,
          filter == "future" => now() < date,
          true
        )
      ] | order(date ${direction})
    )
)
Here, 
${direction}
must be either 
asc
 or 
desc
.
Jul 28, 2021, 8:56 AM
Cool, thanks for the suggestions.
Jul 28, 2021, 9:01 AM

Sanity– build remarkable experiences at scale

Sanity is a modern headless CMS that treats content as data to power your digital business. Free to get started, and pay-as-you-go on all plans.

Get started for freeExplore the demo

Was this answer helpful?

Related answers

Get more help in the community Slack

TopicCategoriesFeaturedRepliesLast Updated
Hey all - what’s the quickest way to batch delete all documents of a certain type? It looks like the `sanity` cli tool allows...Jan 29, 2021
In the tutorial, there is samples of what the API returns as JSON. Is there a way to view these ?Jan 11, 2021
Warning: Data for Page Exceeds the Threshold of 128 kBAug 17, 2022
Custom Document Views - Is it Even Possible to Use the Structure Builder?Apr 21, 2022
How to get the number of nested/children components in a GROQ query.Jan 19, 2024
Issue with fetching data from an array of references and non-references in a groq query.Dec 14, 2023
GraphQL query resolving references on a _raw field in GatsbyMay 17, 2022
GROQ query for getting references from arrays in another array in Sanity.ioApr 9, 2020
How to fetch an array of images using groq in Sanity.ioMay 21, 2023
Is there a way to write a groq query that checks if a boolean is true, and if so, returns an array of referenced documents?...Feb 1, 2021

Related contributions

Turbo Start Sanity
Template

Featured

The battle-tested Sanity template that powers Roboto Studio's websites

Schema UI - Next.js Sanity Starter
Template

Featured

A Next.js starter template with Next.js 15, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, and Sanity CMS with Live Editing. Get production-ready React components with matching Sanity schemas and queries. Build dynamic pages faster while keeping full control over customization.

Serge Ovcharenko

The Swaddle
Made with Sanity

Featured

A new brand identity to represent a more mature company, to signify The Swaddle’s evolution from publisher to production house, combined with an easier to navigate platform that can surface multiple content types - drawing readers through The Swaddle’s content offering.

Nightjar