Accessing referenced collection items is not working as documented

[MoritzLost]

Astro Info

Astro                    v5.1.8
Node                     v20.18.1
System                   macOS (x64)
Package Manager          npm
Output                   static
Adapter                  none
Integrations             @vite-pwa/astro-integration

If this issue only occurs in one browser, which browser is a problem?

No response

Describe the Bug

I want to reference a collection item in a property from another collection. I have defined the property crops using the reference helper, as documented in Defining collection references:

schema: z.object({
    crop: reference('crops'),
}),

Then in my content items (JSON files using the glob loader in this case), I reference an item from the crops collection by ID:

{
    "crop": "grapevine"
}

Now I want to load the grapevine collection item in a template:

const { region } = Astro.props;
const crop = await getEntry('crops', region.data.crop)!;

This is giving me type warnings, and it doesn't return the collection item:

Typehint tells me that region.data.crop is an object with keys collection and id. Therefore, I tried to access the ID, this works correctly and gets rid of the type warnings:

const { region } = Astro.props;
const crop = await getEntry('crops', region.data.crop.id)!;

Is the reference helper supposed to transform the reference into an object like this?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if the documentation is just outdated. The documentation on Accessing referenced data only shows using the property key, not accessing a nested id property.

What's the expected result?

Not sure if the documentation needs to be updated, or the behaviour I'm seeing is a bug.

Link to Minimal Reproducible Example

Not applicable.

Participation

• I am willing to submit a pull request for this issue.

[ascorbic]

Hi. You should change it to:

const { region } = Astro.props;
const crop = await getEntry(region.data.crop)!;

You don't include the collection name, because it's in the reference object.

[MoritzLost]

@ascorbic Ah thanks, I missed that!

It would be useful to mention in the docs that the reference() helper transforms the property, I don't think this is documented anywhere. I've opened an issue on that: withastro/docs#10774