Connections

Connections in the AniList GraphQL API.

Connection fields allow you to paginate through one-to-many or many-to-many relationships as well as access any intermediate data. All connections have 3 root fields: edges, nodes, and pageInfo.

Edges

Edges are the intermediate data between the parent and child nodes. They are the relational link between the two, containing data pertaining to how the two are related along with a reference to the child node.

Example

To help understand how these connections work, we'll use the relationship between Media and Character as an example.

An anime can have many characters, and a character can appear in many anime. These characters have a specific role in the anime (Main, Support, or Background) and they can have multiple voice actors in a single anime.

Neither the role nor the list ofvoice actors make sense to be stored in the Character object, so that connecting data lives on the CharacterEdge object.

{
  Media {
    characters(page: 1) {
      edges { # Array of character edges
        role
        voiceActors { # Array of voice actors of this character for the anime
          id
          name {
            first
            last
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Nodes

Nodes are the actual child data of the connection. You can access them with the node field on the edge object.

::: tip If you do not need to access any of the intermediate data, you can use the nodes field instead of edges. :::