Enable assigning parent via join field from child document edit view

[cristianmihok]

Note: I have searched for similar discussions but none of them were touching this particulare use case.

Currently, Payload’s join field is a powerful way to create bidirectional relationships between collections (e.g., Order ↔ Product) without duplicating data. However, join fields are inherently non editable, particularly from the child side of the relationship.

We are requesting support for making join fields editable on the child collection’s admin edit view, to allow authors to assign or change the parent document (e.g., add a Product to an Order) directly from the child document without needing to edit the parent.

Use Case

• From within a Product admin page allow a content manager to select or update the related Order.
• Improves UX by reducing navigation — currently, assigning a Product to an Order can only be done from the Order edit screen, which makes managing content at scale more difficult.

Proposed Solution

Allow join fields to be optionally editable from the child collection by adding a new admin config option such as editble: true.

This would:

• Render the join field with a relationship input UI on the child side
• Upon update, Payload would automatically update the corresponding relationship field in the parent collection, maintaining data integrity.

// In Orders collection
fields: [
  {
    type: 'relationship',
    name: 'products',
    relationTo: 'products',
    hasMany: true,
  },
]

// In Products collection
fields: [
  {
    type: 'join',
    name: 'order',
    collection: 'orders',
    on: 'products',
    admin: {
      editableFromChild: true
    }
  }
]

Desired Behavior

• Admin UI renders a relationship selector for order in the Product editor.
• Selecting an Order will update that Order’s products field accordingly.
• Changing or removing the association updates the parent document automatically.

Thanks to the Payload team for building such a thoughtfully designed and developer-friendly CMS. I enjoy working with Payload; it’s been a pleasure using it in production. Looking forward to what's coming next!