Plagin to get a collection from database

[agolovan]

We are planning to store collections into database and allow non coders from separate UI to modify this collection. Each of this collections actually a document. This is how it looks:

I want to create a plugin that allow to get collection from database and merge with collections that are defined in typescript, This is how plugin looks with hardcoded external collection:
const myCollections: Array = [
{
slug: 'MilaCollection',
admin: {
useAsTitle: 'Eddie',
},
access: {},
fields: [
{
name: 'Eddie',
type: 'text',
localized: true,
maxLength: 99999,
minLength: 1,
index: true,
unique: true,
},
{
name: 'Larisa',
type: 'text',
localized: true,
maxLength: 99999,
minLength: 1,
index: true,
unique: true,
},
],
},
];

const addCollectionsFromDatabase: Plugin = (incomingConfig: Config): Config => {
// Spread the existing config
const config: Config = {
...incomingConfig,
collections: [
...incomingConfig.collections, ...myCollections
]
};

return config;
};

export default addCollectionsFromDatabase;

However, in place of myCollections, I need to use async/await and get data from database. I am getting CollectionConfig[] type from database, how I could use that in this plugin?

[jacobsfletch]

@agolovan this makes perfect sense to me. You are needing to await a response from your external database before building the Payload config. Sounds like we need to build the plugin configs asynchronously. Here's an entry-point into this: https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/96002dbda5e28565e9bbc3927dfd985798859e36/src/config/build.ts

This sounds entirely possible but I'll do some digging here.

[jmikrut]

With the change to payload.init becoming async in the next release, this will be 100% possible.

Before, async plugins were impossible, but very shortly this will become doable.

[agolovan]

How could I get a response from external database when using plagin as it is running at web browser? At this time it is under a web application that could write/read to MonboDB, could we use same API?

[jacobsfletch]

You need to alias your server-only code so that it does not run in the browser, here are the docs related to that: https://payloadcms.com/docs/admin/webpack#aliasing-server-only-modules

You can also see a good example of this in the Stripe plugin here: https://github.com/payloadcms/plugin-stripe/blob/main/src/extendWebpackConfig.ts