Smart Population

@notum-cz/strapi-plugin-smart-populate expands "smart" populate tokens into native Strapi populate objects.

Use it for content that contains nested components, dynamic zones, media fields, or relations where hand-written populate trees would be repetitive. The plugin reads Strapi schemas at bootstrap and builds the default population shape from them.

Frontend Usage

Pass "smart" for fields that should use schema-generated population:

In this example, the page fetch loads components in the content dynamic zone and populates all of their children. It also loads the seo component and populates its nested media/components.

import { PublicStrapiClient } from "@/lib/strapi-api"

const page = await PublicStrapiClient.fetchOneByFullPath(
  "api::page.page",
  fullPath,
  {
    locale,
    status: "published",
    populate: { seo: "smart", content: "smart" },
  }
)

Effectively, "smart" gives the common nested SEO population out of the box. Without it, the same request would need explicit call parameters like:

const page = await PublicStrapiClient.fetchOneByFullPath(
  "api::page.page",
  fullPath,
  {
    locale,
    status: "published",
    populate: {
      seo: {
        populate: {
          metaImage: true,
          twitter: { populate: { images: true } },
          og: { populate: { image: true } },
        },
      },
      content: "smart",
    },
  }
)

Manual populate objects can still be used next to "smart" when an endpoint only needs a small custom shape.

Strapi Configuration

Plugin registration lives in apps/strapi/config/plugins.ts:

import { smartPopulateConfig } from "./plugins/smart-populate"

export default () => {
  return {
    "smart-populate": smartPopulateConfig(),
  }
}

This usually is enough for most content.

For extended customization, project-specific overrides live in apps/strapi/config/plugins/smart-populate.ts:

import type { PopulateOverrideEntries } from "@notum-cz/strapi-plugin-smart-populate/types"
import type { Modules, UID } from "@strapi/strapi"

type ComponentPopulateMap = {
  [TComponentUID in UID.Component]: Required<
    Modules.Documents.Params.Pick<TComponentUID, "populate:object">
  >["populate"]
}

const populateOverrides = [
  {
    componentUid: "utilities.link",
    mergeWithGeneratedPopulate: true,
    overridePopulate: {
      page: {
        fields: ["fullPath"],
      },
    },
  },
] satisfies PopulateOverrideEntries<ComponentPopulateMap>

export function smartPopulateConfig() {
  return {
    enabled: true,
    config: {
      populateOverrides,
    },
  }
}

Use populateOverrides only when generated component population needs relation-specific fields or depth. See the plugin README for populate override details.