External docs data (third-party API) within the admin panel UI

[bratvanov]

Payload doesn't yet fully support working with external data in the admin panel. A common use case is integrating a third-party service: fetching external data into the admin UI, editing it, and syncing changes back — without storing anything in Payload’s local DB. This allows for a virtual collection with the same UX as native content, which is ideal.

Currently, this is partially possible in the edit view using the beforeRead hook to load external data, and afterChange / afterDelete to sync changes back.

The blocker is the List View, which can't display external data, as the DefaultListView props don’t expose document data, queries, or pagination handlers — these aren’t props yet.

The only current workaround is building a fully custom List View component to load third-party data, which is unfortunate given the complexity of this component.

It would be amazing if:

• The DefaultList view component is more flexible and accepts working with external docs not in the local DB
• New hooks for working with all documents are added, as all current collection hooks only target single document operations. For example, beforeReadAll for short-circuiting the list view local database query, and fetching external docs, as well as another hook for intercepting list view search/filter/pagination events so that they are redirected to the external service.

[bratvanov]

Hey @JarrodMFlesch – I remember we discussed the limited adaptability of DefaultListView last year, as you had some blockers yourself relating to your work on folder view. Not sure if there was any progress or additional discussion on this internally since then.