updatedAt doesn't change to reflect changes in references

APIs Content Delivery API
1

Hi, we are currently using Contentful to model recipes. We have 4 levels recipes -> ingredient sections -> ingredient items -> ingredients

I understand, sadly, that we can search for recipes containing, say, “mango” in the recipe title (level 1) but that we can’t search for “mango” in the actual ingredient list as it is at level 4.

Furthermore we can’t retrieve all recipe titles and ingredients using the api and then search ourselves as the ingredients are at level 4.

Our only option seems to be to retrieve all recipes and referenced content using the “include” level parameter set to a suitable value and search in our app. In order to reduce the data pulled back by such a call, I thought we might be able to retrieve only updated recipes, but unfortunately the updatedAt field is only updated when content at the recipe (level 1) is changed and not when any referenced content is changed eg ingredient unit changed from cups to ounces.

Have I by any chance missed a parameter that will show modified top level content to reflect modified references?

Thanks
Russell

2

Hi Russell,

This is indeed the expected behavior and the metadata properties of your entries should only reflect the state of your current item.

You could however create an additional field, for example, to populate it with a field, for example, LastChildUpdate for this purpose.

With that, it’d be possible to automatically do that by writing a small extension using our UI extension SDK:

https://www.contentful.com/developers/docs/concepts/uiextensions/

3

Thanks Gabriel. I just discovered I can bring back the entire published CMS by updatedAt using the API, so that satisfies my need for now.