How to get populated relationship fields in beforeChange hook

[jsardev]

Is there any possibility to get populated relationship fields on a beforeChange hook data? I tried it all: depth on the triggering Local API calls, forceSelect, defaultPopulate - nothing seems to work in this case.

Is populating the fields manually in the hook the only way? 🤔

[zubricks]

Hey @jsardev this is by design — beforeChange receives the incoming data from the request, not a populated document. It's the raw input before anything is written to the database, so relationship fields will only contain IDs, not populated objects.

If you can expand on what you're trying to accomplish I can make some recommendations from there!

[jsardev]

Hey @zubricks thank you for your reply! Well the title says it all - I just need populated fields in the hook. My specific case is having a products collection with an images upload field which I need to sync with a 3rd party service. I make it work by populating it manually in the hook, but was wondering if there is any better approach.

[zubricks]

Hey @jsardev sorry that I was a bit unclear—manual population is exactly the right approach here since there's no built-in way to get populated data in beforeChange —so for now your approach is sound!