Allow Collection Views to Traverse To-One Relations

Ideas & Features
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Feature Request: Allow Collection Views to Traverse To-One Relations

Problem
Fibery views cannot display collections from a related entity accessed via a To-One relation.
Example:
If Page.MainFrame → Frame, and Frame → Blocks,
there’s no way to show Frame.ContainedBlocks in the Page view.

Current Limitation
The view rendering engine only supports direct collections from the current entity. It does not resolve relation chains like ThisEntity.ToOneRelation.Collection.

Why This Matters
This blocks clean separation between structure (Frame) and content (Block). It forces workarounds like adding backreferences or syncing Block.Page manually.

Request
Allow collection views to traverse one level through a To-One relation.
Example supported patterns:

  • This.MainFrame.ContainedBlocks
  • View filter: Block.ParentFrame = This.MainFrame

Technically Feasible
Fibery already supports this in formulas and the API. The view engine just needs dereferencing support in embedded view configs.

2

Use Cases:

  • HR: Show Performance Comments in Employee view via → Current Employment Record → Comments
    (Clean To-One, avoids duplicate links and broken ownership)

  • Finance: Show Invoices in Customer view via → Account Profile → Invoices
    (Each customer has one profile; no need for direct invoice duplication)

  • Projects: Show Tasks in Project view via → Active Plan → Tasks
    (Swappable plan structure without schema hacks or view limits)

Why Not Use To-Many Instead of To-One

  • Implies multiple active records—not accurate if only one is valid
  • Requires filtering logic (e.g. “latest by date”)—not supported in views
  • Adds fragility and UI workarounds

Why Not Use Both To-One and To-Many

  • Redundant schema—same data linked twice
  • Risk of desync—can’t guarantee To-One matches filtered To-Many
  • Clutters filters, automations, and user understanding

Better

Use one clean To-One (e.g. Employee → Current Record)
Then enable view traversal:

This.CurrentRecord.Comments

Simple, accurate, and maintainable.

3

I just faced this and its quite a problem… changing it to to-many goes against how the schema should be operated.

My usecase: Project → Steps ← Step Template ↔ Documentation.
I’d like to show the documentation on the project, but this only gets allows if the steps to step template is many to many.

Somewhat similar to this: Stop treating "to-one" relation fields like a red-headed stepchild!

4

Are there any plans to change this?

A super simple setup is impossible:

Org → Employment ← Person

I can not make a table on the Org to show the related people… Only the related employments (and show the people field and ask the user to open it like that).

While it would technically be possible to create a custom entity view to solve for this, it’s always desirable.

5

Well, you can make a lookup, so it seems like this need could be solved if lookup fields looked/behaved like direct to-many relations, right?

6

Yes and no, in this specific case, I have a relation view with multiple tabs, and I want to add another tab within this relation view to show the data.