## Why this exists
Lexical in Payload is a React Server Component (RSC). Historically that
created three headaches:
1. You couldn’t render the editor directly from the client.
2. Features like blocks, tables, upload and link drawers require the
server to know the shape of nested sub‑fields at render time. If you
tried to render on demand, the server didn’t know those schemas.
3. The rich text field is designed to live inside a Form. For simple use
cases, setting up a full form just to manage editor state was
cumbersome.
## What’s new
We now ship a client component, `<RenderLexical />`, that renders a
Lexical editor **on demand** while still covering the full feature set.
On mount, it calls a server action to render the editor on the server
using the new `render-field` server action. That server render gives
Lexical everything it needs (including nested field schemas) and returns
a ready‑to‑hydrate editor.
## Example - Rendering in custom component within existing Form
```tsx
'use client'
import type { JSONFieldClientComponent } from 'payload'
import { buildEditorState, RenderLexical } from '@payloadcms/richtext-lexical/client'
import { lexicalFullyFeaturedSlug } from '../../slugs.js'
export const Component: JSONFieldClientComponent = (args) => {
return (
<div>
Fully-Featured Component:
<RenderLexical
field={{ name: 'json' }}
initialValue={buildEditorState({ text: 'defaultValue' })}
schemaPath={`collection.${lexicalFullyFeaturedSlug}.richText`}
/>
</div>
)
}
```
## Example - Rendering outside of Form, manually managing richText
values
```ts
'use client'
import type { DefaultTypedEditorState } from '@payloadcms/richtext-lexical'
import type { JSONFieldClientComponent } from 'payload'
import { buildEditorState, RenderLexical } from '@payloadcms/richtext-lexical/client'
import React, { useState } from 'react'
import { lexicalFullyFeaturedSlug } from '../../slugs.js'
export const Component: JSONFieldClientComponent = (args) => {
const [value, setValue] = useState<DefaultTypedEditorState | undefined>(() =>
buildEditorState({ text: 'state default' }),
)
const handleReset = React.useCallback(() => {
setValue(buildEditorState({ text: 'state default' }))
}, [])
return (
<div>
Default Component:
<RenderLexical
field={{ name: 'json' }}
initialValue={buildEditorState({ text: 'defaultValue' })}
schemaPath={`collection.${lexicalFullyFeaturedSlug}.richText`}
setValue={setValue as any}
value={value}
/>
<button onClick={handleReset} style={{ marginTop: 8 }} type="button">
Reset Editor State
</button>
</div>
)
}
```
## How it works (under the hood)
- On first render, `<RenderLexical />` calls the server function
`render-field` (wired into @payloadcms/next), passing a schemaPath.
- The server loads the exact field config and its client schema map for
that path, renders the Lexical editor server‑side (so nested features
like blocks/tables/relationships are fully known), and returns the
component tree.
- While waiting, the client shows a small shimmer skeleton.
- Inside Forms, RenderLexical plugs into the parent form via useField;
outside Forms, you can fully control the value by passing
value/setValue.
## Type Improvements
While implementing the `buildEditorState` helper function for our test
suite, I noticed some issues with our `TypedEditorState` type:
- nodes were no longer narrowed by their node.type types
- upon fixing this issue, the type was no longer compatible with the
generated types. To address this, I had to weaken the generated type a
bit.
In order to ensure the type will keep functioning as intended from now
on, this PR also adds some type tests
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1211110462564644
Before, unnamed, unlabelled group were part of an unlabeled collapsible
in the version diff view. This means, all it displayed was a clickable,
empty rectangle. This looks like a bug rather than intended.
This PR displays a new <Unnamed Group> label in these cases.
It also fixes the incorrect `NamedGroupFieldClient` type. Previously,
that type did not include the `name` property, even though it was
available on the client.
Before:
<img width="2372" height="688" alt="Screenshot 2025-09-16 at 18 57
45@2x"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0f351f84-a00f-4067-aa40-d0e8fbfd5f0b"
/>
After:
<img width="2326" height="598" alt="Screenshot 2025-09-16 at 18 56
14@2x"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/bddee841-8218-4a90-a052-9875c5f252c0"
/>
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1211375615406676
This PR fixes some incorrect field paths handling (=> should not pass
path and schema paths that contain index paths down to sub-fields
outside of the indexPath property) when building the version fields.
Fixes https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/issues/12376
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1210932060696925
Field-level permissions were not handled correctly at all. If you had a
field set with access control, this would mean that nested fields would
incorrectly be omitted from the version view.
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1210932060696919
Required for #13005.
Opening an autosave-enabled document within a drawer triggers an
infinite loop when the root document is also autosave-enabled.
This was for two reasons:
1. Autosave would run and change the `updatedAt` timestamp. This would
trigger another run of autosave, and so on. The timestamp is now removed
before comparison to ensure that sequential autosave runs are skipped.
2. The `dequal()` call was not being given the `.current` property off
the ref object. This meant that is was never evaluate to `true` and
therefore never skip unnecessary autosaves to begin with.
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1210697235723932
Fixes#11458
Some complex, nested fields were receiving incorrect field paths and
schema paths, leading to a `"Error: No client field found"` error.
This PR ensures field paths are calculated correctly, by matching it to
how they're calculated in payload hooks.
Consolidates all bulk edit related tests into a single, dedicated suite.
Currently, bulk edit tests are dispersed throughout the Admin > General
and the Versions test suites, which are considerably bloated for their
own purposes. This made them very hard to locate, mentally digest, and
add on new tests. Going forward, many more tests specifically for bulk
edit will need to be written. This gives us a simple, isolated place for
that.
With this change are also a few improvements to the tests themselves to
make them more predictable and efficient.
Fixes https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/issues/11224
Fixes https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/issues/10492
This PR fixes a few weird behaviours when `validate: true` is set on drafts:
- when autosave is on and you submit an invalid form it would get stuck in an infinite loop
- PreventLeave would not trigger for submitted but invalid forms leading to potential data loss
Changes:
- Adds e2e tests for the above scenarios
- Adds a new `isValid` flag on the `Form` context provider to signal globally if the form is in a valid or invalid state
- Components like Autosave will manage this internally since it manages its own submission flow as well
- Adds PreventLeave to Autosave too for when form is invalid meaning data hasn't been actually saved so we want to prevent the user accidentally losing data by reloading or closing the page
The following tests have been added
This PR moves the logic for rendering diff field components in the
version comparison view from the client to the server.
This allows us to expose more customization options to the server-side
Payload Config. For example, users can now pass their own diff
components for fields - even including RSCs.
This PR also cleans up the version view types
Implements the following from
https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/discussions/4197:
- allow for customization of diff components
- more control over versions screens in general
TODO:
- [x] Bring getFieldPaths fixes into core
- [x] Cleanup and test with scrutiny. Ensure all field types display
their diffs correctly
- [x] Review public API for overriding field types, add docs
- [x] Add e2e test for new public API
* feat(richtext-lexical): 'bottom' position value for plugins
* feat: TestRecorderFeature
* chore: restructuring to seed and clear db before each test
* chore: make sure all tests pass
* chore: make sure indexes are created in seed.ts - this fixes one erroring test
* chore: speed up test runs through db snapshots
* chore: support drizzle when resetting db
* chore: simplify seeding process, by moving boilerplate db reset / snapshot logic into a wrapper function
* chore: add new seeding process to admin test suite
* chore(deps): upgrade jest and playwright
* chore: make sure mongoose-specific tests are not skipped
* chore: fix point test, which was depending on another test (that's bad!)
* chore: fix incorrect import
* chore: remove unnecessary comments
* chore: clearly label lexicalE2E test file as todo
* chore: simplify seed logic
* chore: move versions test suite to new seed system
