magento2: Graphql Exception "Category image not found" if image doesn't exist shouldn't error the entire request

Summary (*)

When trying to get a list of categories, or even only one category, if “image” field is filled but the image can’t be found on filesystem the request will fail with “Error: Category image not found.” This shouldn’t be the correct behavior as not being able to render an image for a category isn’t an unrecoverable error, and we’ve been able to handle in frontend this kind of errors for years, either be using a fallback or by leveraging other solutions. Plus, when displaying a list of categories an image missing shouldn’t block the whole categories being displayed by erroring the request.

Examples (*)

• Upload an image to a category
• Delete it from FS
• Run any categories Graphql query including “image” attribute
• Watch it fail by “Error: Category image not found.”

In our case, this was the query:

const QUERY = gql`
  query GetLines {
    categories {
      items {
        children {
          name
          children {
            name
            children {
              name
              fast_shipping
              url_path
              image
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
`;

Proposed solution

Remove entirely this exception: https://github.com/magento/magento2/blob/1807f70756b521240c06eb556802422307cabbb5/app/code/Magento/CatalogGraphQl/Model/Resolver/Category/Image.php#L70-L72

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Please provide Severity assessment for the Issue as Reporter. This information will help during Confirmation and Issue triage processes.

• Severity: S0 - Affects critical data or functionality and leaves users with no workaround.

No workaround that we can think of can be applied to recover from this error apart from re-uploading the missing image.