Swap in your own React components

While designing the Payload Admin panel, we determined it should be as minimal and straightforward as possible to allow easy customization and control. There are many times where you may want to completely control how a whole view or a field works. You might even want to add in your own routes entirely. In order for Payload to support that level of customization without introducing versioning / future-proofing issues, Payload provides for a pattern to supply your own React components via your Payload config.

To swap in your own React component, first, consult the list of available component overrides below. Determine the scope that corresponds to what you are trying to accomplish, and then author your React component accordingly.

You can override a set of admin panel-wide components by providing a component to your base Payload config's admin.components property. The following options are available:

Full example:

payload.config.js

import { buildConfig } from 'payload/config';
import { MyCustomNav, MyCustomLogo, MyCustomIcon, MyCustomAccount, MyCustomDashboard } from './customComponents.js';

export default buildConfig({
  serverURL: 'http://localhost:3000',
  admin: {
    components: {
      Nav: MyCustomNav,
      graphics: {
        Icon: MyCustomIcon,
        Logo: MyCustomLogo,
      },
      views: {
        Account: MyCustomAccount,
        Dashboard: MyCustomDashboard,
      }
    }
  }
})

For more examples regarding how to customize components, look at the demo app.

You can override components on a Collection-by-Collection basis via each Collection's admin property.

As with Collections, You can override components on a global-by-global basis via their admin property.

All Payload fields support the ability to swap in your own React components. So, for example, instead of rendering a default Text input, you might need to render a color picker that provides the editor with a custom color picker interface to restrict the data entered to colors only.

Fields support the following custom components:

Sending and receiving values from the form

When swapping out the Field component, you'll be responsible for sending and receiving the field's value from the form itself. To do so, import the useFieldType hook as follows:

import { useFieldType } from 'payload/components/forms';

const CustomTextField = ({ path }) => {
  const { value, setValue } = useFieldType({ path });

  return (
    <input
      onChange={(e) => setValue(e.target.value)}
      value={value}
    />
  )
}

Payload exports its SCSS variables and mixins for reuse in your own custom components. This is helpful in cases where you might want to style a custom input similarly to Payload's built-ini styling so it blends more thoroughly into the existing admin UI.

To make use of Payload SCSS variables / mixins to use directly in your own components, you can import them as follows:

@import '~payload/scss';