Cannot populate many to many relation

System Information
  • Strapi Version: v4.3.0
  • Operating System: MacOs
  • Database: Sqlite
  • Node Version: 16.14.2
  • NPM Version: 8.5
  • Yarn Version: 1.22.19

I can the category when I set one to many but when I change it to many to many the category isn’t populated.

{
  "kind": "collectionType",
  "collectionName": "categories",
  "info": {
    "singularName": "category",
    "pluralName": "categories",
    "displayName": "Category",
    "name": "category"
  },
  "options": {
    "increments": true,
    "timestamps": true
  },
  "attributes": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string",
      "required": true
    },
    "slug": {
      "type": "uid",
      "targetField": "name",
      "required": true
    },
    "articles": {
      "type": "relation",
      "relation": "manyToMany",
      "target": "api::article.article",
      "inversedBy": "categories"
    }
  }
}
{
  "kind": "collectionType",
  "collectionName": "articles",
  "info": {
    "singularName": "article",
    "pluralName": "articles",
    "displayName": "Article",
    "name": "article",
    "description": ""
  },
  "options": {
    "increments": true,
    "timestamps": true,
    "draftAndPublish": true
  },
  "pluginOptions": {},
  "attributes": {
    "title": {
      "type": "string",
      "required": true
    },
    "description": {
      "type": "text",
      "required": true
    },
    "content": {
      "type": "richtext",
      "required": true
    },
    "slug": {
      "type": "uid",
      "targetField": "title",
      "required": true
    },
    "categories": {
      "type": "relation",
      "relation": "manyToMany",
      "target": "api::category.category",
      "inversedBy": "articles"
    },
    "image": {
      "type": "media",
      "multiple": false,
      "required": false,
      "allowedTypes": [
        "images"
      ]
    },
    "author": {
      "type": "relation",
      "relation": "manyToOne",
      "target": "api::writer.writer",
      "inversedBy": "articles"
    }
  }
}

On the frontend :

 fetchAPI("/articles", { populate: ["image", "category"] }),

I’m learning strapi it comes from this blog article:

Hi, have you tried using plural for category as categories? It could be because the relationship has changed it’s looking for many and not just singular now.

Thank you setting to categories fixed the issue