IDE stops me from accessing related objects

Sorry if this is a naive question, I'm still learning. Any tips would be appreciated.

I'd just like to avoid making two calls when 1 call has fetched everything already.

So my

collection has a object

on level=1, whose fields I'd like to access:

    const tenantDocs = await req.payload.find({
        collection: 'tenants',
        depth: 1,
        where: {
            slug: {
                equals: tenantSlug
            }
        }
    })

    const tenant = tenantDocs.docs[0]

My IDE (VS Code) doesn't want to let me do this:

What's best practice here? Is there some way to instruct the IDE that the fields are there?

Heh 🙂 I didn't think ChatGPT could answer this but decided to try anyway:

"When working with systems like Payload CMS where the shape of your data can change dynamically based on parameters like

, it can be challenging to get your IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to understand the exact structure of your data at compile time. This is especially true in TypeScript, where you want to leverage its type-checking capabilities.

Here are some strategies to handle this situation:

### 1.

:

You can use type assertions in TypeScript to inform the compiler about the expected shape of your data. This is like telling TypeScript, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

For example, if you have a relationship field that you know will be an object after fetching with a certain depth, you can assert it as such:

interface RelatedObjectType {
  // Define the structure of your related object here
}

// Assume 'data' is the object you fetched
const relatedObject = data.relatedField as RelatedObjectType;

This tells TypeScript that

is of type

, and you'll get appropriate IntelliSense for it.

### 2.

:

If you want to be more rigorous, you can write a type guard function to check the shape of your data at runtime. This is more code but can provide better safety.

function isRelatedObjectType(obj: any): obj is RelatedObjectType {
  return obj && typeof obj === 'object' && 'expectedField' in obj;
}

if (isRelatedObjectType(data.relatedField)) {
  // Now TypeScript knows data.relatedField is RelatedObjectType
}

### 3.

:

If the shape of the data extends a base type, you can use interface extension to define the types for different depth levels:

interface BaseData {
  id: string;
  // ... other base fields
}

interface DepthOneData extends BaseData {
  relatedField: RelatedObjectType;
}

// Then assert the fetched data as DepthOneData
const detailedData = data as DepthOneData;

### 4.

:

As a last resort, if you're confident about the structure of your data, you can suppress TypeScript errors with

type, but this defeats the purpose of using TypeScript:

const relatedObject = (data.relatedField as any) as RelatedObjectType;

Or using the non-null assertion operator (if you are sure that

is not null):

const relatedObject = data.relatedField!;

### 5.

:

If you have control over the data fetching function, you could potentially enhance it to return a more specific type based on the

parameter. This might involve some advanced TypeScript types or generics.

### Conclusion

Ideally, you want to balance between informing TypeScript about your data structures (for safety and IntelliSense) and not overcomplicating your code. Type assertions are a good middle ground for situations where you know more about the data than TypeScript can infer. However, always be cautious with type assertions and make sure your runtime data aligns with your type assumptions to avoid runtime errors."