Discussing linking embedded documents in Sanity.io schemas

I have a document of type

Parent

that has a

content

field that is an array of documents of type

Child

(not reference to

Child

). I would like to create another field that can choose one

Child

from the `Parent`'s

content

field. Is this possible?

Hey User! I'm curious, if the

Child

documents aren't references, what does this look like in your schema? Re: selecting a

Child

, what's the ultimate goal of selecting it?

simplified, but I want to be able to refer to a

lesson

that is in a `module`'s

content

array

It looks like there is no way to do this in vanilla Sanity (please tell me I'm wrong) and I'm looking at custom input components. However, the

props

passed to

React.forwardRef

don't seem to provide a means to access the

parent

object / document (or at least, I can't seem to find a way).

My use case is that I want to be able to refer to one

lesson

from another

lesson

. I was doing this with references and a custom filter, which worked when the

lesson

was a separate document and referenced by the module. Now that it is embedded in the module, I need another way of referencing / selecting the

lesson

.

The reason that we have embedded the `lesson`s inside the

module

(and

module

in

course

, and

course

in

programme

) is that there were simply too many loose documents, and the course creators where having to jump through hoops to manage the documents. Now they all exist within the context of a single

programme

container, everything is much simpler - except I still need to link from one

lesson

to another.

If you're trying to create references between lessons, I recommend you create them as documents. As you mentioned, you could create a custom input component that queries for information in a field in another document, but this is a really brittle content model. I think you'll find it's easier to maintain if you create them as documents, use dynamic filters in your reference fields and create a custom desk structure for organizing the documents.
However, if you do decide to go the custom input component route, you can access other fields in the document by exporting the component with the

withDocument

HOC .

we've gone back to using references, and whilst I can link (refer) to lessons, I will need solve the organisation of content in the desk structure and programme publishing (all linked documents need to be published too). But that is for another day... :-)

Working with Structure Builder can be a bit daunting when you first start working with it, so feel free to come back if you get stuck!