Problems sorting by a relationship field

[dkanthofer]

Link to reproduction

N/A

Describe the Bug

When sorting a list by a relationship field, it actually sorts by the related document's ID. It should be alphabetically sorted by the field defined in useAsTitle of the related collection.

As you can see in the screenshot, the Testrelation column seems to be sorted randomly, while in fact this is the alphabetical order of the IDs from the related collection.

To Reproduce

1. Add a field like this to a collection:

{
  name: 'testrelation',
  type: 'relationship',
  relationTo: 'relationExamples',
},

2. Then in the relationExamples collection, add at least a title field and define it as the useAsTitle:

const RelationExamples: CollectionConfig = {
  slug: 'relationExamples',
  admin: {
    useAsTitle: 'title',
    listSearchableFields: ['title'],
  },
  fields: [
    {
      name: 'title',
      type: 'text',
    },
  ],
}

3. Generate some entries in both collections and be sure to fill in the relationships
4. Now open the first collection and click one of the sort arrows next to the Testrelation column header.
5. You can check against the API that the sorting order is based on the ID, not the title

Payload Version

2.0.13

Adapters and Plugins

db-mongodb, bundler-webpack

[JessChowdhury]

Hi @dkanthofer - currently this is the expected behavior. We would like to accomodate sorting on relationship fields in the future, which will require building some new functionality - so I'm going to convert this to a feature request and we'll get it on our roadmap.

For now, a potential workaround would be to customize the id. Adding a new text field with the name id to your collection will replace the default value. You could also use a field hook to automatically populate this field so you don't need to write it out twice.

[markusahrweileramcon]

is it also expected, that I cannot sort the collection by a field of the relationship?
e.g. createdAt?

defaultSort: 'address.street'
The only way to achieve this currently, would be to copy all fields of the relationships you possibly want to sort by to the entity itslef.
Which is heavy overload. When changing the field in the relationship, I need to update every entity, which has this relationship selected and update its field. Other way round, when I select a different relationship, I need to update the field also

[markusahrweileramcon]

is "virtual field" something different as i mentioned?

but thanks, for stating the obvious

[tlmader]

@BrianJM Sorry to bring up an old thread.

Payload's current docs on sorting state:

Because sorting is handled by the database, the field cannot be a Virtual Field. It must be stored in the database to be searchable.

What's the current recommended approach to sorting on a related document's field?

[mathieu2em]

hi guys is it still the current behavior ?
@JessChowdhury I tried your solution with the idea of customizing the id but problem is it breaks the relationship as the relationship is linked by its id to the collection

[denolfe]

Sorting by other values should work. Field in our test suite sorted by text here. If you're seeing otherwise, I'd log an issue.

[mathieu2em]

Hi @denolfe thank you for your answer,
I believe you are talking about the behavior in the dropdown while we are talking about the behavior in the admin panel when looking at the collection.
I updated to the latest version and tried what you just showed in your link but it's not changing the behavior when I sort in my admin collection panel.
I would like the behavior to be that when I click the little arrows, on my field to sort it, for it to sort by the sortOptions that I stated or at least by what I put in the collection in useAsTitle or defaultSort.

[mathieu2em]

[matthijs166]

Is this supported in Payload 3?

[markusahrweileramcon]

afaik, no

[matthijs166]

For all our next project we are going to use the search plugin if we have overviews where we need sorting on deeper levels.