collection or global (array field vs collection?)

unonweb

9 months ago

1 2

• Selected Answer
  

  JarrodMFlesch

  Payload Team

  9 months ago

  Maybe I am misunderstanding your question - but what we normally do is create a group of meta fields and add them to a collection, and on every collection the meta data is unique so it needs to be filled out on a per document basis.

  We have built a plugin for managing meta data as well and you can read more about it here.

  Let me know if I am missing something!

  3 replies
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  unonweb

  9 months ago

  Thank you for your reply.

  [...] create a group of meta fields and add them to a collection [...] on every collection the meta data is unique so it needs to be filled out on a per document basis.

  Well, I don't want one document to be rendered as one page.
  I want all - let's say - blog posts on one page, all publications on one page,...
  For these pages I need meta data, a featured image, headings.

  Before I had it organized using a collection (containg posts) plus a global (containg the page wide data).
  Now I organize it putting everything in a global using an array for the blog posts.
  It works fine but I was wondering how other people do it and what the advantages and disadvantages of either approach are.

• 

  JarrodMFlesch

  Payload Team

  9 months ago

  Couldn't you make a pages collection, create a page, select (relationship field) the docs from the other collection, then set metadata on the page?

  We normally create pages with blocks and make a block for what you are describing. You could create a block that lets you pick specific docs from other collections (using a relationship field). You could also adjust how your block works and allow for users to check a check box i.e. "latest", and then you could use a before read to populate the field dynamically.

  This is the approach I would recommend, storing meta inside a global feels odd, personally.

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  unonweb

  9 months ago

  Thank you Jarrod, you've corrected my way of using Payload at the right time.

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  unonweb

  9 months ago

  I've found another disadvantage of b):

  • no timestamps (no createdAt and updatedAt properties)