Proper O2M relationships in Postgres

euporos8 months ago

3

{:slug "area_of_operation"
   :fields [{:name "name"
             :label "Name"
             :type "text"
             :required true}]}
…
{:slug "project"
   :fields [{:name "area_of_operation"
             :label "Land"
             :type "relationship"
             :hasMany false
             :relationTo (slug-for area-of-operation)
             :required true}]}
…}

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  jmikrut

  8 months ago

  Hey @OliverMotz — I totally hear what you're saying here

  
  

  
  

  we do have plans to expose controls to be able to define relations like one to many in a more expected way, which will be opt-in

  
  

  
  

  can you open a GitHub discussion and tag it as a feature request so we can work toward implementing it accordingly?

  
  

  
  

  basically, you're right in that our current pattern is deliberate, but if we could expsoe a new opt-in property for o2m relations, we could very easily accomplish what you're looking to do

  
  

  
  

  we wanted to see what the demand was for this approach before putting time into it, but i think there are really solid reasons to add it

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  euporos8 months ago

  Hey @jmikrut thank you so much for the swift reply. I'm coming to Payload from Directus so I have really come to appreciate transparency towards the underlying SQL, but, of course, I understand that Payload originated with mongodb in mind and that some of the object relational mapping you have to do might be easier with the table structure you currently impose . Also, on a general note, this really turned out to be the first thing about payload that I didn't find amazing. otherwise I'm really impressed and Payload is likely going to supersede Directus for future projects. After all, I have managed to make it play nice with a Clojurescript Macchiato backend on Node.js, so what's not to like?

  
  
  

  I will go ahead and open and issue on GitHub and outline my concerns regarding this somewhat unorthodox table structure. I'm going to mark this as solved for now, but will post the link to the feature request.

  
  
  

  Thanks again and keep up the good work!

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  jmikrut

  8 months ago

  @OliverMotz of course! Yeah, with complex CMS-like data structures, you might have LOTS of different relationship fields deeply nested within arrays / blocks / etc. and we built the initial beta with a mindset toward performance and simplicity, but we definitely do want to expose controls for more granular relationship management. It's actually going to be trivially easy to implement and will definitely land before releasing Postgres as stable. Keep an eye out and PLEASE bring on any feedback you have for us!