Optional group field

mvarendorfflast year

18

• 

  jmikrut

  last year

  I believe that group fields are set to required or not based on if there are any fields

  within

  a group field that are required or not

  
  

  
  

  if your group contains ONLY optional fields, it should be optionally typed

• 

  mvarendorfflast year

  I see 🤔 So there is no way to say "This whole thing can either be undefined, or if it exists, you are guaranteed to have these fields in it"?

  
  

  
  

  Especially for reused fields, that would help a lot

  
  

  
  

  In my specific case, we got a custom file-input that connects to an external service for files (beyond what upload is capable of, sadly), and we'd love to express an optional file

  
  

  
  

  But if a file is present, stuff like ID, filename and download URL should be required for instance

• 

  jmikrut

  last year

  put a condition on the group

  
  

  
  

  i think that could do it?

  
  

  
  

  FYI - to calculate if a field should be marked as required in TS, here's the code:

  
  

  
  

  https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/master/src/utilities/entityToJSONSchema.ts#L10
  

  
  

  notice how if the field has a condition, that will tell Payload to mark it as optional

• 

  mvarendorfflast year

  Feels like a hack but that does indeed work, so I'll take it, thanks!

  
  

  
  

  Out of curiosity: Why was the decision made to ignore the required field on things like groups?

• 

  jmikrut

  last year

  just because a "group" doesn't really accept data on its own, it's up to the child fields to specify data

  
  

  
  

  and

  required

  is really not relevant to most things that

  required

  typically means - like, validation, form state, etc

  
  

  
  

  but i could see how it could affect the typescript types specifically, so i would not be opposed to respecting it within TS type gen

• 

  mvarendorfflast year

  I see, thanks for the insight!

  
  

  
  

  Maybe I'll find some time in the next days to give the TS gen thing a stab then!