guidance for payload.update() when updating Relationship field

RobertAlbus

2 years ago

1 3

[
  {
    relationTo: 'pages',
    value: {
      parent: [Object],
      title: 'Parent Page',
      renderings: [],
      children: [],
      createdAt: '2021-06-20T06:04:33.461Z',
      updatedAt: '2021-06-22T01:08:52.412Z',
      id: '60ceda71361a3300191cfd4b'
    }
  },
  {
    relationTo: 'pages',
    value: {
      parent: [Object],
      title: 'Sub Page',
      renderings: [],
      children: [],
      createdAt: '2021-06-20T06:05:13.529Z',
      updatedAt: '2021-06-22T00:57:55.799Z',
      id: '60ceda99361a3300191cfd7b'
    }
  }
]

{
  relationTo: 'datasource-folders',
  value: {
    id: '60ceda71361a3300191caa12'
  }
}

payload.update({
      collection: originalParent.type,
      id: originalParent.id,
      data: {
        children: updatedChildren // the array above
      }
    });

Error: Argument passed in must be a single String of 12 bytes or a string of 24 hex characters

[
  ...
  {
    relationTo: 'datasource-folders',
    value: '60ceda71361a3300191caa12'
  },
]

• Selected Answer
  

  Ontopic

  2 years ago

  I feel you should look into hooks as quick advice. At least that's how I created something similar.

  1 reply
• 

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  Yes thanks for the suggestion @Ontopic I am using hooks to implement this. Getting the hooks to fire was pretty straight forward, it's the interaction with the local API inside the hook where I am having no luck.

• 

  jmikrut

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  Hey @RobertAlbus — I can shine some light on this for you!

  First up, from your question above, this snippet is an example for how a hasMany: true and relationTo: [ ] relationship will look when it is populated by the depth parameter:

  [
    {
      relationTo: 'pages',
      value: {
        parent: [Object],
        title: 'Sub Page',
        renderings: [],
        children: [],
        createdAt: '2021-06-20T06:05:13.529Z',
        updatedAt: '2021-06-22T00:57:55.799Z',
        id: '60ceda99361a3300191cfd7b'
      }
    }
  ]

  However, the actual data that is stored in the database looks like this:

  [
    {
      relationTo: 'pages',
      value: ObjectID('60ceda99361a3300191cfd7b'),
    }
  ]

  So, to update, you need to send it data just like you mentioned:

  [
    ...
    {
      relationTo: 'datasource-folders',
      value: '60ceda71361a3300191caa12'
    },
  ]

  What is the error that is displaying when you try to update with this data? From my perspective this looks exactly right!

  14 replies
  

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  This is super helpful @jmikrut. Thanks for clarifying the expected shape for updating a relationship field with hasMany: true.

  The error I see when I submit an update

  const updatedChildren = [
    ...
    {
      relationTo: 'datasource-folders',
      value: '60ceda71361a3300191caa12'
    },
  ]; 
  // this array can also be empty
  
  payload.update({
        collection: originalParent.type,
        id: originalParent.id,
        data: {
          children: updatedChildren
        },
      });
  

  to either remove or add an item to the relationship field, the server crashes with the following stack trace

  app_1  | /node_modules/payload/dist/fields/relationshipPopulationPromise.js:19
  app_1  |                 idString = idString.toString();
  app_1  |                                     ^
  app_1  | 
  app_1  | TypeError: Cannot read property 'toString' of undefined
  app_1  |     at populate (/node_modules/payload/src/fields/relationshipPopulationPromise.ts:46:29)
  app_1  |     at rowPromise (/node_modules/payload/src/fields/relationshipPopulationPromise.ts:105:17)
  app_1  |     at /node_modules/payload/src/fields/relationshipPopulationPromise.ts:119:24
  app_1  |     at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
  app_1  |     at /node_modules/payload/src/fields/relationshipPopulationPromise.ts:102:22
  app_1  |     at /node_modules/payload/src/fields/performFieldOperations.ts:118:86
  app_1  |     at Array.map (<anonymous>)
  app_1  |     at Payload.performFieldOperations (/node_modules/payload/src/fields/performFieldOperations.ts:118:66)
  app_1  |     at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)
  app_1  |     at Payload.update (/node_modules/payload/src/collections/operations/update.ts:272:12)
  

  After this the admin panel starts to behave weird. The page that displays the collection list for the recently-associated item does not show any items, except for every 3 or 4 page refreshes. The app throws the same stack trace as above on every page refresh for this collection's list view.

  I feel like I am just missing something basic but the stack trace, Payload source, documentation, and reviewing my code just aren't leading me where I need to go.

  

  jmikrut

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  Hey @RobertAlbus — can you hook me up with your collection config?

  I will do some testing with it. Should be able to figure this out. Nothing jumps out at me as being incorrect with the code that you've provided thus far!

  

  jmikrut

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  @RobertAlbus another thought... one thing I am thinking is that you might have some bad data somewhere in your database.

  The error that you sent would make sense if the shape of a document somewhere was bad. It's attempting to convert a Mongo ObjectID to a string and clearly failing. We will go ahead and add in a fix to that case to hopefully make everything a bit more stable for future users. But in the interim, I'd poke through your database for any documents affected by this update for an old or bad data shape.

  

  jmikrut

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  @RobertAlbus I thought I'd just blow you up. You got me thinking.

  Just deployed 0.7.2 which safely accesses the toString method which was erroring out on what I imagine is potentially bad data. I'd be curious to see three things:

  1. Your config so I can test myself
  2. If this fixes your issue (I imagine it will "side-step" it)
  3. If you found any bad data in your DB
  

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  1. my config is split up across a number for source files and some of it is also built dynamically. It might be easiest if I share a link to source code if you're good with that.
  2. this didn't fix the issue but the error changed
  3. I did find malformed data in the item I added the new relationship entry to:

     {
         "_id":"ObjectId(""60d3b796ad579d0018fe1b27"")",
         "title":"Kontralto Consulting Corp",
         "children":[
             {   // should have an ID but doesn't
                 "relationTo":"pages"
             }
         ],
         "createdAt":"ISODate(""2021-06-23T22:37:10.681Z"")",
         "updatedAt":"ISODate(""2021-06-23T22:39:25.322Z"")",
         "__v":0
     }
     

  

  Ontopic

  2 years ago

  I personally run into this every now and then, then I reseed my database. Not sure if that's an option for you, but otherwise fixes issues like this quite often.

  

  Ontopic

  2 years ago

  Thanks for sharing your repo, interesting research in there!

  

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  then I reseed my database

  Thanks for the prompt, I blew away the database and tried again for sanity's sake. Sanity not found :P it happens with a fresh database without fail.

  

  Ontopic

  2 years ago

  I'm gonna be trying to get your repo to run and see what I can find. I personally only have experience with keeping one-to-one relationships in sync, which went fine, but one-to-many is definitely something I need to play around with anyway, for sanity's sake 🙃 Imagine what Payload could do with 39M...

  

  DanRibbens

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  Hey @RobertAlbus,

  Thank you so much for sharing your repo, I like how you're building your collections and sharing functionality between them. This kind of smart achitecture is exactly the kinds of creative solutions we hoped people would do with Payload CMS.

  I found the bug! I noticed that the call to update the parent in with the children objects is being given the id of the parent and not the child document. Here is a screenshot of my debugger before the call to payload.update() in your hook:

  

  One important mention, You're using the beforeChange hook but new documents will not have an id yet. To do what you want, you'll need to change the hooks to run afterChange instead of beforeChange at least for new documents. Then you'll be able to use the correct child id for children relationships when you update the parent document.

  I hope this helps, let us know how it goes!

  

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  Thanks for the response @DanRibbens. I see what you're pointing out there.

  My next steps were to move those hooks from beforeChange to afterChange. The issue was still present so I changed the hooks from field hooks to afterChange collection hooks but the issue of malformed data is still present.

  doc

  {
    id: '60dce0b06a737200188df539',
    parent: { relationTo: 'sites', value: '60dce0a56a737200188df506' },
    heading: 'My Page',
    renderings: [],
    children: [],
    createdAt: '2021-06-30T21:22:56.678Z',
    updatedAt: '2021-06-30T21:22:56.678Z'
  }
  

  parent

  {
    id: '60dce0a56a737200188df506',
    title: 'Kontralto Consulting Corp',
    children: [],
    createdAt: '2021-06-30T21:22:45.113Z',
    updatedAt: '2021-06-30T21:22:45.113Z'
  }
  

  updated children list

  [ { relationTo: 'pages', id: '60dce0b06a737200188df539' } ]
  

  api call

  payload.update({
    collection: 'sites',
    id: '60dce0a56a737200188df506',
    data: { children: [ { relationTo: 'pages', id: '60dce0b06a737200188df539' } ] }
  })
  

  database content

  > db.sites.find()
  { "_id" : ObjectId("60dce0a56a737200188df506"), "title" : "Kontralto Consulting Corp", "children" : [ { "relationTo" : "pages" } ], "createdAt" : ISODate("2021-06-30T21:22:45.113Z"), "updatedAt" : ISODate("2021-06-30T21:22:56.718Z"), "__v" : 0 }
  > db.pages.find()
  { "_id" : ObjectId("60dce0b06a737200188df539"), "parent" : { "relationTo" : "sites", "value" : ObjectId("60dce0a56a737200188df506") }, "heading" : "My Page", "renderings" : [ ], "children" : [ ], "createdAt" : ISODate("2021-06-30T21:22:56.678Z"), "updatedAt" : ISODate("2021-06-30T21:22:56.678Z"), "__v" : 0 }
  

  My apologies for continuing to bump this discussion - I really want to figure this out... I must just have something wrong.

  

  DanRibbens

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  Hey @RobertAlbus, No problem!
  I just made a PR to your repo that fixes the bug, though you'll want to clean it up. The problem was the relationship object for the children was being sent as id instead of value. After making this change I was able to save a Page with a relationship to a Site without error and the database appears to be correct with both relationships being populated.

  https://github.com/RobertAlbus/kto-cms/pull/1

  We have a plan to update the documentation because I too was confused by this until I dug deeper. Beyond that we can work on adding validation so value is required for relationTo of multiple types. That would have caught this immediately.

  

  RobertAlbus

  2 years ago

  @DanRibbens ! This is fantastic. Thank you for digging into that. I checked out your branch and like what I see. Very instructive.

  I agree with updating the docs and adding validation. If you want to ping me for a review on either of those please feel free.

  

  DanRibbens

  Payload Team

  2 years ago

  Cool! Here is a PR for the documentation changes: #214

• 

  lrkcode

  9 months ago

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