cache.modify INVALIDATE doesn't result in query refetching data

Intended outcome:

My motivation is to invalidate data in cache, so that queries can refetch invalidated data. (For that reason I just return _id from mutation. I know I can return data with mutation, but this scenario has implication on invalidating data on mutations with side effects.)

For that purpose I’m using cache.modify and INVALIDATE flag to invalidate data in cache based on docs.

My expectation is that invalidation will result in query refetching data from server because data is not valid any more.

I also tried evict and it works, but my impression is that invalidate mechanism should allow us to refetch data based on dirty status. Did I miss something in code or did I misunderstood it? Thanks!

Codesandbox

Actual outcome:

Query that fetches all todos is reobserved but it doesn’t refetch data.

I tried to debug it and it seems cache diff is non existent. After cache.modify invalidation, query is reobserved but data is resolved from cache instead refetched.

What I found is that INVALIDATE is translated into dirty status here, but Query when calculating diff doesn’t see any difference here

How to reproduce the issue:

Open Codesandbox and try to change status of todo item.

It doesn’t change.

Versions

System: OS: macOS 10.15.5 Binaries: Node: 14.2.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.2.0/bin/node Yarn: 1.22.5 - ~/.yvm/versions/v1.22.5/bin/yarn npm: 6.14.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.2.0/bin/npm Browsers: Chrome: 85.0.4183.121 Firefox: 75.0 Safari: 13.1.1 npmPackages: @apollo/client: 3.2.0 => 3.2.0

[omerman]

@benjamn I don’t understand how reobserveQuery is a solution to this problem… I mean, INVALIDATE indicator should refetch, this is why we all came to this thread, it is intuitive that it would work that way, it is expected to trigger a refetch, no matter how the fetch policy is defined. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we need a way to mark a query as “needs to refetch next time it is observed”, outside react & hooks context, using purely the Apollo client.

[tafelito]

@benjamn what about queries that are not currently active?

I mean, I have 2 pages, in page 1 I have a list of items, in page 2 I have a function where I can query some data or do something and I need to invalidate data from page 1. Then when I navigate to page 1, I want to show existing data but since cache data is invalidated, I want to refetch data form the server. The fetch policy in page 1 query is cache first

The way I see INVALIDATE or how I would like to use it in this case is whenever I go to page 1, if data is valid and fetchPolicy is cache-first, then no network request is made, but if somewhere if my app I invalidate the data for a particular fieldName, next time, even with cache-first, a network request should be made and cached (invalidated) data should be returned before the request is made.