Infer query inputs / variables from URLSearchParams

[pixelmund]

Describe the feature

in #789 @jycouet suggested to expand the route parameter inferring to also use url.searchParams, i think the comment got lost or wasn't considered at that moment. Imo this would improve filtering / searching in many applications and is probably worth exploring more, since we know all parameters a query needs ahead of time we should be able to easily do this.

I love Houdini and just coming back to using it on my side projects. The only thing i don't really enjoy is the way variables for queries work in general. +page.gql files are awesome and really intuitive! But once you need some kind of variable that isn't included as route parameter you have to create a +page.ts to export this weird _Variables function or move to _houdini_load to have both in the same file.

Criticality

cool improvement, my projects will benefit from it

[jycouet]

👋 hey hi, nice to see you around.
Yes, back then we decided to postpone this topic, happy to bring it back here.

Today, when you forgot a variable, you get an immediate warning at build time that you are missing something. When starting to look at SearchParams, we can't really check at build time. At runtime, if you don't have good SearchParams, you will experience failing queries.

One way could be to opt-in this behavior? with a directive @dont_check_variables_function_and_use_search_params (with a better name 😅)

[pixelmund]

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying! 🙂

Maybe we could allow only non required variables to be defined by search params, that way it shouldn't cause any failing queries, since most of the time you will have some kind of default or logic in place to handle them accordingly. (e.g. search filter, order by, etc.)

A directive/opt-in sounds also good to me.