Fetching nested metafield values with GraphQL & Hydrogen

Retired Boards Appdev Graphql Basics And Troubleshooting

Topic summary

A developer is working with Shopify’s GraphQL API in a Hydrogen project and needs to fetch nested metafield values, specifically those with type list.metaobject_reference.

Current Challenge:

  • Product pages contain Metaobjects with lists of other Metaobjects
  • GraphQL query returns metaobject references as stringified GID arrays (e.g., "[\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26311262474\",...]") rather than resolved objects
  • The developer has implemented a “brute force” solution in the loader function that manually parses these GID strings and fetches each referenced metaobject

Key Question:
What is the standard/recommended practice for fetching nested metaobject references in GraphQL? The current approach involves:

  1. Parsing the stringified GID array from the value field
  2. Manually fetching each metaobject using fetchMetaObjectData
  3. Mapping through multiple levels of nested references

The developer suspects this manual approach isn’t the intended pattern and is seeking guidance on proper GraphQL query structure for handling nested metaobject relationships. They acknowledge limited GraphQL experience and note the complexity escalates quickly when sections contain lists of metaobjects.

Status: Question remains unanswered; seeking community best practices.

Summarized with AI on November 4. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Our page has a lot of information packed into each product page.

It is not uncommon to have Metaobjects containing lists of other Metaobjects.

Fetching nested metafield values

What is the standard practice when it comes to fetching nested metafield values, specifially values with type

list.metaobject_reference

The fragment, as part of query

fragment ProductPageSections on Product {
...
    science: metafield(namespace: "custom", key: "study_section") {
      key
      reference {
        ... on Metaobject {
          fields {
            key
            value
            type
          }
        }
      }
    }
}

Which returns

"study_section": {
        "key": "study_section",
        "reference": {
          "fields": [
            ...
            {
              "key": "styled_list",
              "value": "[\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26311262474\",\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26312540426\",\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26312212746\",\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26312999178\",\"gid://shopify/Metaobject/26313130250\"]", <-- This is the data I need to access.
              "type": "list.metaobject_reference"
            },
            ...
          ]
        }
      },

I’ve been able to “brute force” this sort of request in the loader function, but I get the feeling that this is not how these queriesn are meant to be used.

Example of loader function in products.handle$.tsx

// products.$handle.tsx

export async function loader(args: LoaderFunctionArgs) {
  const deferredData = loadDeferredData(args);
  const criticalData = await loadCriticalData(args);

  const { summary, references, whatToExpect, science } = criticalData.product;

  const sections = await Promise.all(
    [summary, references, whatToExpect, science].map(async (section) => {
      if (!section?.reference?.fields) {
        return section;
      }

      const newFields = await Promise.all(
        section.reference.fields.map(async (field) => {
          if (!field.value) return field;

          if (field.type === 'list.metaobject_reference') {
            const formattedJson = JSON.parse(field.value) as string[];

            // Simple fetching query
            let valueFetched = await fetchMetaobjectData(
              formattedJson,
              args.context.storefront,
            );

            return { ...field, valueFetched };
          }
          return field;
        }),
      );

      return {
        ...section,
        reference: { fields: newFields },
      } as PageSection;
    }),
  );

  return defer({
    ...deferredData,
    ...criticalData,
    sections,
  });
}

This does return the values I expect.

However, given that the fetched sections (valueFetched ) can also contain lists of metaobjects - it quickly starts to become very complicated.

What is the standard practice on fetching nested metafields and objects like this?

Please have patience with my limited experience with Graphql ^^

Thank you.