Media is typed as string | Media

default discord avatar
chris_heinz
5 months ago
3

I am using the auto generated types from Payload and a media collection for several upload fields. As I am typing my component props the media properties like e.g. "icon" is typed as string | Media which leads to error when referring to Media attributes like icon.filename because that does not exist on strings of course. It's a pain to cast all of the media types to be Media. To me the typing does not make sense so I am questioning if the mistake is on my side or there is a good reason for it to be string | Media.



autogenerated from payload-types.


export interface Header {
  id: string;
  logo?: string | Media;
}
  • discord user avatar
    dribbens
    Payload Team
    5 months ago

    Hi @chris_heinz,


    That is not a mistake on your part. We have had a lot of discussion around the best way to type relationships and uploads. The complication here is that when a document is read the population is dynamic based on the

    depth

    parameter. Since there are times when the depth is 0, you can expect to get a string with the

    id

    instead of the Media object.


    There have been some ideas come out about how this could be improved in Github discussions.

    https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/discussions/1563


    I added a link if you're interested in that, several comments talk about workaround to the depth problem.



    Oh and one other reason that a relationship or upload can be a string is because of access control. Suppose a user can read a parent document but is not allowed

    read

    access to the related doc. That relationship will not be populated and is left as a string.

  • default discord avatar
    chris_heinz
    5 months ago

    Alright I already thought that this (edit: depth) might be the reason for it. I will give it a read later that day and hopefully I ll come up with a better solution than type casting it in the frontend. Thank you a lot for the explanation @dribbens

  • discord user avatar
    dribbens
    Payload Team
    5 months ago

    You're welcome @chris_heinz. We're always looking for ways to improve so please share in on the discussion if you have new insight.

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