Excluding fields from the GET /collection REST API results

[joncys]

So, this seems like something that should've been answered or mentioned somewhere before, but I cannot find anything on the official docs or by searching and reading through the Q&A section of the forums here.

Is there a way to filter / exclude fields from the REST API response when. querying the collection, like when doing:

GET api/collection

I want only certain fields to be returned, like maybe imagined title, publishedAt and coverImage.
Imagine I also have a content field that is of type richText. I don't want that to be returned for when I just want to list the collection items and show their coverImage and publishedAt date.

I cannot really do depth=0, because I want to go in with depth: 1 for the coverImage field and also, it does not remove most of the text for the richText fields within the collection.

As far as I understand, my only option now is to create a separate endpoint for this on the collection and then do the exclusion myself.

[w-tai]

I don't have an answer for this - but I'm looking for the exact same thing, not sure why it hasn't come up sooner. Other than a custom endpoint there doesn't seem to be a simple configuration available.

The use case is similar, only needing certain fields like title, description when returning a list in a collection, ignoring other data from the same level.

[w-tai]

It looks like the afterRead hook used inside a Collection is a good solution. The findMany boolean distinguishes between singular or list REST API query, and you can remove the fields manually from a copy of the doc object that you don't want to be returned in one or both default endpoints. You also have access to the user object, so you can bypass any manipulations when the Collection is queried via the Admin UI.

https://payloadcms.com/docs/hooks/collections#afterread

// file: `src/collections/Something`
export const Something: CollectionConfig = {
  fields: [
    ...
  ]
  ...
  hooks: {
    afterRead: [
      (async ({doc, req, query, findMany}) => {
        if (req.user != null) return doc; // ignore hook for logged in users

        const docCopy = {...doc};

        // do not return createdAt field for any api calls
        // delete docCopy.createdAt;

        if (findMany) {
          // delete fields when listing collection
          delete docCopy.richText;
        } else {
          // delete fields when single item is queried
        }

        return docCopy;
      }) as CollectionAfterReadHook
    ],
  },
  ...
}

[revnelson]

This is great, but still requires the full document to be sent from the database to payload, a copy to be made, and the document to be trimmed. Imagine a collection of thousands of items, hundreds of fields each, on a site that gets tens of thousands of hits each day. A way to select the fields you need before the database request is made seems absolutely necessary.

[r1tsuu]

This plugin contains Select - Rest API

From readme:
After the plugin is enabled you can use a select query parameter in the same way you would with the where parameter:

http://localhost:3000/api/posts?select[color]=true

Is it? I didn't use but sadly probably works only for 0 depth (so can't exclude field inside blocks array relations etc), i'll check it
I think this should be included in payload core query functionality