## 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
Customizing the `path` property on default document views is currently
not supported, but the types suggest that it is. You can only provide a
path to custom views. This PR ensures that `path` cannot be set on
default views as expected.
For example:
```ts
import type { CollectionConfig } from 'payload'
export const MyCollectionConfig: CollectionConfig = {
// ...
admin: {
components: {
views: {
edit: {
default: {
path: '/' // THIS IS NOT ALLOWED!
},
myCustomView: {
path: '/edit', // THIS IS ALLOWED!
Component: '/collections/CustomViews3/MyEditView.js#MyEditView',
},
},
},
},
},
}
```
For background context, this was deeply explored in #12701. This is not
planned, however, due to [performance and maintainability
concerns](https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/12701#issuecomment-2963926925),
plus [there are alternatives to achieve
this](https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/12772).
This PR also fixes and improves various jsdocs, and fixes a typo found
in the docs.
I think it's easier to review this PR commit by commit, so I'll explain
it this way:
## Commits
1. [parallelize eslint script (still showing logs results in
serial)](c9ac49c12d):
Previously, `--concurrency 1` was added to the script to make the logs
more readable. However, turborepo has an option specifically for these
use cases: `--log-order=grouped` runs the tasks in parallel but outputs
them serially. As a result, the lint script is now significantly faster.
2. [run pnpm
lint:fix](9c128c276a)
The auto-fix was run, which resolved some eslint errors that were
slipped in due to the use of `no-verify`. Most of these were
`perfectionist` fixes (property ordering) and the removal of unnecessary
assertions. Starting with this PR, this won't happen again in the
future, as we'll be verifying the linter in every PR across the entire
codebase (see commit 7).
3. [fix eslint non-autofixable
errors](700f412a33)
All manual errors have been resolved except for the configuration errors
addressed in commit 5. Most were React compiler violations, which have
been disabled and commented out "TODO" for now. There's also an unused
`use no memo` and a couple of `require` errors.
4. [move react-compiler linter to eslint-config
package](4f7cb4d63a)
To simplify the eslint configuration. My concern was that there would be
a performance regression when used in non-react related packages, but
none was experienced. This is probably because it only runs on .tsx
files.
5. [remove redundant eslint config files and fix
allowDefaultProject](a94347995a)
The main feature introduced by `typescript-eslint` v8 was
`projectService`, which automatically searches each file for the closest
`tsconfig`, greatly simplifying configuration in monorepos
([source](https://typescript-eslint.io/blog/announcing-typescript-eslint-v8#project-service)).
Once I moved `projectService` to `packages/eslint-config`, all the other
configuration files could be easily removed.
I confirmed that pnpm lint still works on individual packages.
The other important change was that the pending eslint errors from
commits 2 and 3 were resolved. That is, some files were giving the
error: "[File] was not found by the project service. Consider either
including it in the tsconfig.json or including it in
allowDefaultProject." Below I copy the explanatory comment I left in the
code:
```ts
// This is necessary because `tsconfig.base.json` defines `"rootDir": "${configDir}/src"`,
// And the following files aren't in src because they aren't transpiled.
// This is typescript-eslint's way of adding files that aren't included in tsconfig.
// See: https://typescript-eslint.io/troubleshooting/typed-linting/#i-get-errors-telling-me--was-not-found-by-the-project-service-consider-either-including-it-in-the-tsconfigjson-or-including-it-in-allowdefaultproject
// The best practice is to have a tsconfig.json that covers ALL files and is used for
// typechecking (with noEmit), and a `tsconfig.build.json` that is used for the build
// (or alternatively, swc, tsup or tsdown). That's what we should ideally do, in which case
// this hardcoded list wouldn't be necessary. Note that these files don't currently go
// through ts, only through eslint.
```
6. [Differentiate errors from warnings in VScode ESLint
Rules](5914d2f48d)
There's no reason to do that. If an eslint rule isn't an error, it
should be disabled or converted to a warning.
7. [Disable skip lint, and lint over the entire repo now that it's
faster](e4b28f1360)
The GitHub action linted only the files that had changed in the PR.
While this seems like a good idea, once exceptions were introduced with
[skip lint], they opened the door to propagating more and more errors.
Often, the linter was skipped, not because someone introduced new
errors, but because they were trying to avoid those that had already
crept in, sometimes accidentally introducing new ones.
On the other hand, `pnpm lint` now runs in parallel (commit 1), so it's
not that slow. Additionally, it runs in parallel with other GitHub
actions like e2e tests, which take much longer, so it can't represent a
bottleneck in CI.
8. [fix lint in next
package](4506595f91)
Small fix missing from commit 5
9. [Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into
fix-eslint](563d4909c1)
10. [add again eslint.config.js in payload
package](78f6ffcae7)
The comment in the code explains it. Basically, after the merge from
main, the payload package runs out of memory when linting, probably
because it grew in recent PRs. That package will sooner or later
collapse for our tooling, so we may have to split it. It's already too
big.
## Future Actions
- Resolve React compiler violations, as mentioned in commit 3.
- Decouple the `tsconfig` used for typechecking and build across the
entire monorepo (as explained in point 5) to ensure ts coverage even for
files that aren't transpiled (such as scripts).
- Remove the few remaining `eslint.config.js`. I had to leave the
`richtext-lexical` and `next` ones for now. They could be moved to the
root config and scoped to their packages, as we do for example with
`templates/vercel-postgres/**`. However, I couldn't get it to work, I
don't know why.
- Make eslint in the test folder usable. Not only are we not linting
`test` in CI, but now the `pnpm eslint .` command is so large that my
computer freezes. If each suite were its own package, this would be
solved, and dynamic codegen + git hooks to modify tsconfig.base.json
wouldn't be necessary
([related](https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/11984)).
This PR makes the "test" folder strict in typescript.
`pnpm build:test` before: Found 3275 errors in 174 files.
`pnpm build:test` after: Found 4912 errors in 268 files.
At some point we should bring that number to 0 and make it a requirement
in the CI. Currently `pnpm build:test` is not run anywhere in the CI.
Additionally, I took the opportunity to combine the duplicate
configurations from `tsconfig.json` and `tsconfig.typecheck.json` using
"extend".
declaration, declarationMap and sourceMap have been removed as they have
no reason to exist in noEmit.
The settings I left in `tsconfig.typecheck.json` are ones that I'm not
sure why they are there. Perhaps the file could be removed or at least
reduced further.
As proposed here
https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/pull/9782#issuecomment-2522090135
with additional testing of our types we can be more sure that we don't
break them between updates.
This PR already adds types testing for most Local API methods
6beb921c2e/test/types/types.spec.ts
but new tests for types can be easily added, either to that same file or
you can create `types.spec.ts` in any other test folder.
The new test folder uses `strict: true` to ensure our types do not break
with it.
---------
Co-authored-by: Tom Mrazauskas <tom@mrazauskas.de>
