How can I use the API of a collection after setting content-manager.visible: false?

Questions and Answers
1

I need to keep the collection’s API fully functional (for operations like find , create , delete , etc.) while hiding it from the Strapi admin panel. What is the best way to achieve this?

I have a test-collection in the root project:
api/test-collection/...
content-types
controllers
services

After setting content-manager: false for this collection, I can no longer use its content-manager API.
This means that calls to /content-manager/collection-types/api::test-collection.test-collection will result in a 403 error.

{
  "kind": "collectionType",
  "collectionName": "test-collection",
  "info": {
    "singularName": "test-collection",
    "pluralName": "test-collections",
    "displayName": "test collection",
    "description": ""
  },
  "options": {
    "draftAndPublish": true
  },
  "pluginOptions": {
    "content-manager": {
      "visible": false
    },
    "content-type-builder": {
      "visible": false
    }
  }
}

Is there a way to hide the collection while keeping its API accessible?

From what I have found so far, we can only achieve this by defining our own custom endpoints that implement the necessary logic of basic ( filtering, sorting, plagination, totals etc ) and using axios to call it. But is there a simpler way to do this?