Payload Dynamic Value Rich Text Plugin

A powerful Payload CMS plugin for the Lexical editor that allows you to designate field values as dynamic variables. These variables can be reused throughout your rich text content and are visually represented as interactive badges.

Features

• Inline Autocomplete: Trigger a searchable list of available dynamic fields using @ (default) or a custom character (like #).
• Visual Badges: Variables appear in the editor as clean, non-editable badges with a "VAR" prefix, making them distinct from regular text.
• Automatic Field Resolution: Pull fields automatically from specified Collections and Globals, or provide manually defined fields.
• Unit Tokenization: Variables are treated as single units—selecting or deleting them happens in a single action.
• Clipboard Support: Copy and paste dynamic values between editors or documents while maintaining their data integrity.
• Light & Dark Mode: Seamlessly integrates with Payload's admin UI theme.

Installation

pnpm add @od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext
# or
npm install @od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext

Basic Setup

Add the plugin to your payload.config.ts:

import { buildConfig } from 'payload'
import { dynamicValuePlugin } from '@od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext'

export default buildConfig({
  plugins: [
    dynamicValuePlugin({
      collections: ['company-settings', 'sites'],
      globals: ['contact-info'],
      trigger: '@',
    }),
  ],
  // ... rest of config
})

Configuration

In your Lexical editor configuration, add the DynamicValueFeature to your list of features:

import { DynamicValueFeature } from '@od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext'

// In your collection/global field definition:
{
  name: 'content',
  type: 'richText',
  editor: lexicalEditor({
    features: ({ defaultFeatures }) => [
      ...defaultFeatures,
      DynamicValueFeature(),
    ],
  }),
}

Plugin Options

Option	Type	Description
collections	CollectionSlug[]	Automatically extract all text-based fields from these collections.
globals	GlobalSlug[]	Automatically extract all text-based fields from these globals.
fields	Field[]	Manually provide a list of Payload fields to be used as dynamic values.
trigger	string	The character that triggers the autocomplete popup. Defaults to @.

How it Works

1. Resolution: The plugin recursively flattens the fields of your chosen collections and globals. For example, if you have a Global contact-info with a field email, it becomes available as contact-info.email.
2. Injection: When you type the trigger character in the editor, a popup appears showing all available fields.
3. Storage: The variable is stored as a custom DecoratorNode in Lexical, which holds a reference to the field path (value) and the display label.

Frontend Rendering (Important)

If you render Lexical content on your website with RichText, you must provide this plugin's JSX converters. Without this, Payload will show custom nodes as unknown node.

Option A: automatic (recommended)

Use the plugin-provided wrapper component that injects converters for you:

import { DynamicValueRichText } from '@od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext/react'

<DynamicValueRichText data={page.content} payloadData={page} />

Option B: manual converters

import { RichText } from '@payloadcms/richtext-lexical/react'
import { DynamicValueJSXConverters } from '@od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext/jsx'

<RichText data={page.content} converters={DynamicValueJSXConverters} />

If you want to resolve the dynamic value from real document data at render time:

import { createDynamicValueJSXConverters } from '@od-labs/payloadcms-dynamic-value-richtext/jsx'

const converters = createDynamicValueJSXConverters({ data: page })

Development

To run the development environment:

1. Clone the repository
2. Install dependencies: pnpm install
3. Create a .env in the dev folder (see .env.example)
4. Run development: pnpm dev

Ownership

Created & Owned by OD LABS. This plugin is open and free for use to all under the MIT License.

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! If you have ideas for improvements or find any issues, feel free to open a Pull Request or create an Issue.

License

MIT