GraphClient limit $select

Question

Thanks to this forum, I last week learned that I could use RawOrderBy and RawFilter when using the GraphClient. But is there also a RawSelect somewhere?

I'm asking because I noticed that the options we have for GraphMessageFields (e.g. Default, Info, ...) results in rather poor performance.

To test, I made the calls directly using Microsoft Graph rather than the Rebex component (which I prefer to use because of the excellent support for encrypted messages)

A call with (basically GraphMessageFields.Envelope)

$select=id,subject,internetMessageId,receivedDateTime,from,sender,toRecipients,ccRecipients,bccRecipients,replyTo&$top=1000

takes about 10 times more time than one with (a limited set of what was in GraphMessageFields.Info)

$select=id,subject,receivedDateTime,from,parentFolderId,isRead,hasAttachments&$top=1000

So if I could specify the fields needed, the performance gain of my application would be huge.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it is not possible to specify custom $select in the current version.

We already planned this feature, but we have decided to postpone it because of 3 things we were unsure:

• how to handle values not directly accessible through the API (e.g. internetMessageHeaders), this would lead to another API for reading such values
• or whether to add every single property of the GraphMessageInfo into the GraphMessageFields enum (instead of using raw string)
• finally, how custom $select would affect future features (e.g. GraphMessageFields.AttachmentInfo would possibly affect the final URL, but in other way than $select does)

However, we were not aware of the tremendous difference in server computation time between GraphMessageFields.Envelope and GraphMessageFields.Info.

We will discuss the possibilities for implementing custom $select. I will send you link to preview version ASAP.