## 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
- bumps next.js from 15.3.2 to 15.4.4 in monorepo and templates. It's
important to run our tests against the latest Next.js version to
guarantee full compatibility.
- bumps playwright because of peer dependency conflict with next 15.4.4
- bumps react types because why not
https://nextjs.org/blog/next-15-4
As part of this upgrade, the functionality added by
https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/11658 broke. This PR fixes it
by creating a wrapper around `React.isValidElemen`t that works for
Next.js 15.4.
---
- To see the specific tasks where the Asana app for GitHub is being
used, see below:
- https://app.asana.com/0/0/1210803039809808
This PR introduces a few changes to improve turbopack compatibility and
ensure e2e tests pass with turbopack enabled
## Changes to improve turbopack compatibility
- Use correct sideEffects configuration to fix scss issues
- Import scss directly instead of duplicating our scss rules
- Fix some scss rules that are not supported by turbopack
- Bump Next.js and all other dependencies used to build payload
## Changes to get tests to pass
For an unknown reason, flaky tests flake a lot more often in turbopack.
This PR does the following to get them to pass:
- add more `wait`s
- fix actual flakes by ensuring previous operations are properly awaited
## Blocking turbopack bugs
- [X] https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/76464
- Fix PR: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/pull/76545
- Once fixed: change `"sideEffectsDisabled":` back to `"sideEffects":`
## Non-blocking turbopack bugs
- [ ] https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/76956
## Related PRs
https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/12653https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/12652
**BREAKING CHANGE:**
This bumps the **minimum required Next.js** version from 15.0.0 to
15.2.3. This update is necessary due to a critical security
vulnerability found in earlier Next.js versions, which requires an
exception to our standard semantic versioning process.
Additionally, this bumps all templates to the latest Next.js and Payload
versions.
This bumps next.js to 15.2.0 in our monorepo, as well as all @types/react and @types/react-dom versions. Additionally, it removes the obsolete `peerDependencies` property from our root package.json.
This PR also fixes 2 bugs introduced by Next.js 15.2.0. This highlights why running our test suite against the latest Next.js, to make sure Payload is compatible, version is important.
## 1. handleWhereChange running endlessly
Upgrading to Next.js 15.2.0 caused `handleWhereChange` to be continuously called by a `useEffect` when the list view filters were opened, leading to a React error - I did not investigate why upgrading the Next.js version caused that, but this PR fixes it by making use of the more predictable `useEffectEvent`.
## 2. Custom Block and Array label React key errors
Upgrading to Next.js 15.2.0 caused react key errors when rendering custom block and array row labels on the server. This has been fixed by rendering those with a key
## 3. Table React key errors
When rendering a `Table`, a React key error is thrown since Next.js 15.2.0
