Hi @sandorbedo this is a common misreading of the spec. This is talking about the overall response shape, not the resolution of any specific field. Absinthe absolutely lets you do the following:

{
  fieldwithNoError
  fieldWithError
}

fieldwithNoError will return a result even if fieldWithError returns an error. What you’re asking about is for an individual field to return both data and errors. That’s governed by this section of the spec: Handling Field Errors which unambiguously states:

If a field error is raised while resolving a field, it is handled as though the field returned null,
and the error must be added to the “errors” list in the response.

Absinthe is compliant here.

EDIT: A quick check of the 2025 draft shows that this remains unchanged in the latest draft too: GraphQL

To answer your last question first:

You absolutely can:

object :hero do
  field :id, :id
  field :name, :string, resolve: &name_or_error/3
end

defp name_or_error(parent, _, _) do
  case Map.fetch(parent, :name) do
    {:ok, name} -> {:ok, name}
    :error ->  {:error, "Name for character with ID #{parent.id} could not be fetched."}
  end
end

It’s worth pointing out as well that in your example what is the path of the error? It’s "path": ["hero", "heroFriends", 1, "name"]. This means that the error was raised while resolving this field. If it was raised from the heroFriends field you would see the path simply be ["hero", "heroFriends"].

This is not correct. Every field has a resolver. Every field is “resolved”. Objects do not have resolvers at all, only fields do. More to the point, the spec is talking about the “process” of resolving a field, which isn’t implementation specific. See GraphQL. Every field goes through this execution and resolution process recursively.