afterChange "Create New Entry" in Collection

[nicholas-mercer]

Good Afternoon Everyone,

I might just be missing something in the documentation, but I'm running into an issue; I have let's say 10 different collections, but when something is added to one of these collections, I want to create a new entry into one called "ActivityFeed" as an example.

After some digging around myself, I attempted to use ChatGPT and Bard (even after feeding it Payload documentation - it wasn't great to say the least); ChatGPT tried to suggest something like the following:

1. Import "ActivityFeed" Collection:
   import ActivityFeed from './ActivityFeed';

2. Add function that could be used in hook for collection:

const afterChange: CollectionAfterChangeHook = async ({ doc, previousDoc, operation, req }) => {
  if (operation === 'create' || operation === 'update') {
    const activity = {
      timestamp: new Date(),
      type: operation === 'create' ? 'added' : 'updated',
      relatedItem: doc._id, // Use the document's _id as the related item
      user: doc.author, // Use the author from the document as the user
    };

    // Create a slug for the activity feed entry based on the related item's title
    const relatedItemTitle = doc.title || previousDoc.title;
    const slug = createSlug(relatedItemTitle);

    // Save the activity feed entry
    const activityFeedModel = req.models[ActivityFeed.slug];
    const activityFeed = await Payload.findOne(ActivityFeed.slug, {}, activityFeedModel);
    await Payload.create(ActivityFeed.slug, { ...activity, slug }, activityFeedModel, activityFeed);
  }

  return doc;
};

...or this...

const afterChange: CollectionAfterChangeHook = async ({
  doc,
  previousDoc,
  operation,
  req,
  model,
}) => {
  if (operation === 'create' || operation === 'update') {
    const activity = {
      timestamp: new Date(),
      type: operation === 'create' ? 'added' : 'updated',
      relatedItem: doc._id, // Use the document's _id as the related item
      user: doc.author, // Use the author from the document as the user
    };

    // Create a slug for the activity feed entry based on the related item's title
    const relatedItemTitle = doc.title || previousDoc.title;
    const slug = createSlug(relatedItemTitle);

    // Save the activity feed entry
    await Payload.adapters.default.create(
      ActivityFeed.slug,
      { ...activity, slug },
      model
    );
  }

  return doc;
};

I know this is all wrong, and I know I'm overlooking something - so if anyone could give me any guidance or just point me in the right direction, I'd REALLY appreciate it as I'm feeling a bit stuck at the moment. I know I'm just missing something along the lines of payload.create, but everything I try is just erroring out or making TypeScript very angry haha.

Thanks in advance y'all, I really appreciate any help!!!

Cheers,
-Nick

[denolfe]

I would definitely recommend going to the docs before using anything like ChatGPT.

What you're looking for is the Local API's create function. Here's some psuedo-code for you to work from:

// Inside hook
await req.payload.create({
  collection: "activity", // Activity collection slug
  data: {
      timestamp: new Date(),
      type: operation === 'create' ? 'added' : 'updated',
      relatedItem: doc.id, // Relation field to current collection 
      user: doc.author,  // Relation field to user collection
    },
});