Enabling users to add new field to a collection type by API

Questions and Answers Strapi Backend
1
System Information
  • Strapi Version: v1.22.17
  • Operating System:
  • Database: MariaDB
  • Node Version:
  • NPM Version:
  • Yarn Version:

Hello all, I am going to build an inventory management system with Strapi for my client. However, I am still not so sure if I can implement a particular requirement from them after studying the basics of Strapi. They want the ability to add an arbitrary number of text fields to a particular collection type. Is it possible that I could write that logic for that and provide an API for the frontend?

2

Hi Patrick, yes you can achieve this by creating a component that is a single text-field, and then adding that component as a named repeating component to a single or collection type.

You could also have name->value pairs by extending the component to have two text fields.

Hope that helps.

1 Like
3

@knowncolor sure that helps! Sounds like I haven’t used to the content manager yet :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Further to the question, to my knowledge, only admin users could access the content manager in a production environment, but in my case, I don’t even want their “admin” user (which should be under the “users” category in Strapi’s language) to mess with the other fields in the collection type, I want them to just able to add and remove. I probably would make a custom inventory managing frontend, but with this “add new fields” function. How could I go further with this “add components to dynamic zone” setup?

4

Hi @Patrick_Lee, the users for the admin panel are different from users that might sign up on your web app.

To limit updates to a certain field for a certain user role you will need to create custom endpoints.

5

That branches into two questions to me now.

  1. Should the logic behind the custom endpoint I will be implementing make changes to the database directly?

  2. What I do is in fact already can been done by content manager, and I understand that content manager is considered as a default plugin that comes with Strapi. Should I extend the plugin or can I make use of the existing functions (or even endpoints) of the content manager instead of coding that from scratch?

6

Hi @Patrick_Lee, somethoughts…

  1. Your custom endpoint can interact with the database using the entity service, or the lower level query api.

  2. Strapi makes available a REST API for all your data by default, as well as the admin UI plugin API so its up to you. The admin UI gives you a lot for free vs building a web UI.

7

@knowncolor thank you very much for the directions! I am now looking at adding the fields in the dynamic zone by the default APIs with a proper admin user. I just suddenly realise that I could let the system admin login as an admin user without going to the default /admin page by making use of the admin login API.