Creating a schema for a blog platform with sub posts in Sanity
10 replies
Last updated: Aug 8, 2022
S
Hello everyone 👋 I'm pretty new to Sanity and its schema architecture and I've been trying to find any solution regarding my query but couldn't.Basically, I'm trying to make a blog platform similar to
Buildspace where there are "posts" and within those posts, there are "sub posts". How would I go about creating a schema that makes this possible? My initial thought was to have a sub post array in the Post schema that references another schema of SubPost, but I also want to have control over the order of sub posts within a post, and would also like to structure sub posts nicely for scalability purposes.
What would be the most straightforward solution for this? I've attached a picture regarding the type of thing I'm trying to build. Any help would be immensely helpful!
Buildspace where there are "posts" and within those posts, there are "sub posts". How would I go about creating a schema that makes this possible? My initial thought was to have a sub post array in the Post schema that references another schema of SubPost, but I also want to have control over the order of sub posts within a post, and would also like to structure sub posts nicely for scalability purposes.
What would be the most straightforward solution for this? I've attached a picture regarding the type of thing I'm trying to build. Any help would be immensely helpful!
Aug 7, 2022, 7:17 AM
M
Hey there, I’m doing something very similar with my ‘project’ doc schema, which has an array of ‘sections’, one of which is a ‘projectStructure’ object schema.Each of which has a ‘title’ field and an ‘aspects’ array field of type ‘projectStructureAspect’.
Each of which (in your case) could have whatever fields are relevant to you for lessons, like a ‘name’ string field and ‘text’ array of type ‘block’ (for a general rich text editor).
You can browse
my repo here to get an idea. Just pay attention to the ‘project’ schema and directory, copy/edit as necessary, and play with how Studio compiles it, doing a hard browser refresh sometimes to test changes.
Each of which (in your case) could have whatever fields are relevant to you for lessons, like a ‘name’ string field and ‘text’ array of type ‘block’ (for a general rich text editor).
You can browse
my repo here to get an idea. Just pay attention to the ‘project’ schema and directory, copy/edit as necessary, and play with how Studio compiles it, doing a hard browser refresh sometimes to test changes.
Aug 7, 2022, 8:19 PM
S
Hello, thank you for the reply! I was actually thinking of something similar but since I need to control the order of the sub posts, I was wondering if an array type will retain the order of the subposts. Will I also be able to reorder the sub posts from sanity studio?
Aug 8, 2022, 5:30 AM
M
Yes, you can natively reorder items in an array.So it looks like you’d have 3 files:
• ‘project’ (document), fields: title, array of type:
• ‘step’ (object), fields: title, array of type:
• ‘lesson’ (object), fields: heading, subheading, body
• ‘project’ (document), fields: title, array of type:
• ‘step’ (object), fields: title, array of type:
• ‘lesson’ (object), fields: heading, subheading, body
Aug 8, 2022, 6:23 AM
S
Yes, I'm going to keep it simple for now and just have a "project" schema that has an array of type "lesson". Thanks a lot for the help, appreciate it :)
Aug 8, 2022, 6:47 AM
M
Sure! If individual lessons are ONLY relevant to a particular ‘project’ instance, then ‘lesson’ should be of type ‘object’. If a ‘lesson’ is reusable across projects, then of type ‘document’.
Aug 8, 2022, 6:53 AM
S
Yes one lesson is only relevant to a project but when I change the type of lesson to 'object' I'm only able to search for lessons, not create new ones. Any idea why?
Aug 8, 2022, 6:59 AM
S
On the contrary, if I set the type to 'document' I can create the lessons outside and refer to them in this list. But since a lesson is unique to a project it's not good to have documents of random lessons together right?
Aug 8, 2022, 7:02 AM
M
exactly, it’s the referencing part that’s making a lookup. Try this:
export default {name: "projectTopic",
type: "object",
title: "Project Topic",
fields: [
{
name: "heading",
type: "string",
title: "Heading",
options: {
list: [...topics],
},
readOnly: ({ parent, value }) => {
return (
topics.map((t) => t.value).includes(value) &&
(parent?.text || parent?.subtopic)
);
},
},
{
name: "text",
type: "array",
title: "Text Area",
of: [
{
type: "block",
title: "Text Area",
},
],
hidden: ({ parent }) => {
return parent?.heading === "Process" || !parent?.heading;
},
},Aug 8, 2022, 7:04 AM
M
exactly, it’s the reference part that’s creating the lookup. Try this:
export default {
name: "lesson",
type: "object",
title: "Lesson",
fields: [
{
name: "title",
type: "string",
title: "Title",
},
{
name: "text",
type: "array",
title: "Text Area",
of: [
{
type: "block",
title: "Text Area",
},
],
},Aug 8, 2022, 7:10 AM
S
Oh gotcha! Removed the reference and it works flawlessly. Thanks a bunch :)
Aug 8, 2022, 7:45 AM
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