PayloadCMS Data Field Types: An Overview

In this guide, we’re going to go over data fields in PayloadCMS.

Out of the box, Payload CMS comes with a lot of different types of fields you can use to build out your collections and globals. In this video, we will start to go over three groups of fields that I’ve unofficially called the main fields, layout fields, and relationship fields.

This doesn’t cover every field available to you in Payload CMS, but it should get you started, since configuration options are similar across all fields. We also will not cover the Rich Text field in this guide. Instead, I will cover that in a future guide so we can make time to discuss it in depth.

We also will not cover all the configuration options for the fields as we go. Since most field types include the same types of config options, I will cover that in a separate guide.

Main fields

My grouping of these fields is not official by any means, but it helps me to think about these fields in different categories. The main fields are the data fields that most people will use day-to-day when building out their Payload CMS project.

Payload CMS calls all of these fields data fields, meaning they store data in the database. A few of the fields we will cover later, like the upload and relationship fields, are not included in this video even though they are data fields. These types of fields require more time and detail to explain than the following fields.

The fields we’ll go over in this video include the text, email, number, select, checkbox, and date fields.