# Transforming data with methods in Connectors - The Weekly Wisdom - Edition #13

**URL:** <https://community.apollographql.com/t/transforming-data-with-methods-in-connectors-the-weekly-wisdom-edition-13/9308>\
**Category:** Weekly Wisdom\
**Tags:** odyssey, connectors, weekly-wisdom\
**Created:** [July 24, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://community.apollographql.com/t/transforming-data-with-methods-in-connectors-the-weekly-wisdom-edition-13/9308 "2025-07-24T01:53:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Michelle\_Mabuyo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/community.apollographql.com/michelle_mabuyo/32/80_2.png) [@Michelle\_Mabuyo](https://community.apollographql.com/u/Michelle_Mabuyo)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://community.apollographql.com/t/transforming-data-with-methods-in-connectors-the-weekly-wisdom-edition-13/9308/1 "2025-07-24T01:53:27Z")

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### 🎓 Welcome to The Weekly Wisdom

**🗓 Edition** #13 **- 31 Jul 2025**  
**🏷 Topic tags** - #Connectors #odyssey  
**🔔 Stay in the loop: Subscribe to the “The Weekly Wisdom” category to get notified when new posts drop—no FOMO here.**

* * *

Hey all! 👋 @Michelle_Mabuyo here from the Apollo Education team. I’m a Developer Educator and I build courses for Odyssey, our official learning platform.

I’m back for the next edition of a multi-part series to teach you the basics of Apollo Connectors: a powerful way to bring existing REST APIs into your graph, all through configuration in the schema.

### 💡This week’s learning: Transforming data with methods in Connectors

REST APIs often return deeply nested or verbose data. Apollo Connectors let you reshape that data using transformation methods! To use the method, you’ll need to prefix it with an arrow (`->)`. Here’s my top three most used, with examples for each!

`first`: **Extracts the first item from an array**.

To retrieve just the first variant of a product:

```graphql
variant: variants->first {
  price
  quantity
}

```

`entries`: **Converts an object’s key-value pairs into a list of objects.**

To transform a collection of unique key-value pairs into objects with consistent keys:

```graphql
specs: specs->entries {
  name: key
  value
}

```

`size`: **Returns the length of a list.**

To save the frontend client an extra step of calculating the number of elements in the array:

```graphql
colorCount: colors->size

```

### 🔎 Want to go deeper?

You can [find a full list of methods](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/connectors/mapping#methods) in the Apollo documentation.

### 💬 Share your thoughts in the thread below ⬇

Have you used transformation methods in your Connectors? What methods do you want to see that aren’t implemented yet? Let us know!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chauntay\_Lawson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/community.apollographql.com/chauntay_lawson/32/5424_2.png) [@Chauntay\_Lawson](https://community.apollographql.com/u/Chauntay_Lawson)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2025, 4:33pm UTC](https://community.apollographql.com/t/transforming-data-with-methods-in-connectors-the-weekly-wisdom-edition-13/9308/2 "2025-07-31T16:33:11Z")

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