Relation widget: store related item's slug value in valueField

[criticalmash]

- Do you want to request a feature or report a bug?
feature

- What is the current behavior?
The relation widget's valueField allows you to specify a field in another collection as a lookup value for items in that collection. The sample case given is the related item's title.

- label: "location"
        name: "Location"
        widget: "relation"
        collection: "locations"
        searchFields: ["title", "streetAddress"]
        valueField: "title"

- What is the expected behavior?
I would prefer to store the related item's slug/filename in the valueField instead. This would allow me to easily lookup and include the file or it's data when generating the site.

Also, by using the filename, CMS can provide some guarantee that keys are unique.

- label: "location"
        name: "Location"
        widget: "relation"
        collection: "locations"
        searchFields: ["title", "streetAddress"]
        valueField: "{{slug}}"

With this type of config, I can load in a collection of files as a JS object and lookup an item by it's slug.

var locationSlug = frontmatter.location;
var locationData = locations[locationSlug];

- Please mention your CMS, node.js, and operating system version.
CMS v1.1.0

Thanks,
John

[tech4him1]

This will be much easier once the slug is a separate field: #445.

[criticalmash]

Thanks @tech4him1 I've subscribed to that issue.

[robsonsobral]

As I pointed on #445 , slug and filename isn't necessarily the same thing.

(I'm really looking forward to use the filename as valueField.)

[amykapernick]

Is there any update on this? I'd like to use the slug as a value field as well

[erquhart]

Not yet, but the general slug handling story is very much on the radar.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[tobytraylor]

I'd like to use the slug as the valueField as well.

[schjetne]

This issue is kind of killing Netlify CMS for me right now. I organize the articles like this: {{topic}}/{{slug}} and topic is a relation field. As it is right now I can’t do what I had planned because I cannot expect the users to make a manual “slug” for all topics in the site.

This issue has been open for two years and looks like the most requested feature in the whole system. What is the progress looking like?

(Yes, I realize I’m getting impatient with free software…)

[erezrokah]

Hi @schjetne, we try to get to the most upvoted features first. This one is ranked as number 9 per this sort: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc
You could up vote it so it get more visibility.
Regardless we are always open for contributions.

[schjetne]

Thank you! Upvoted. I found a hacky way of solving this, but will eagerly await updates so I can delete my work-around when the relation slug finally arrives.

[dopry]

@erezrokah how does #3659 close this issue?

[erezrokah]

Hi @dopry, you can now configure valueField: "{{slug}}".
See the second example here https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/widgets/#relation