Minimize Your Use of Multi-Refs

Multi-ref fields are a compelling feature, but they are hugely limited and difficult to work with.

They have administrative limits;

• The ordering of these fields is fixed, so you must add items in the specific sequence you want them to appear.
• You cannot re-order items. You must delete items from the end, to insert your needed item, and then re-add those items.

And they have presentation limits;

• When you present content from a multi-ref field in a nested Collection List, you are limited to 5 items. Yes, five.
• Those 5 cannot be filtered, or sorted- so e.g. trying to display events at a venue falls apart fast.
• Multi-refs cannot be accessed through ref field connections. If [A] has a ref to [B] and [B] has a multi-ref to [C], then a collection list bound to [A] cannot nest a collection list bound to [B]'s multi-ref.

When to avoid using multi-refs

Signs you're using them wrong

• If your multi-ref fields contain 10+ items
• If you're struggling with the inability to reorder your multi-refs
• If you feel frustrated that there is a limit of 5 in the nested Collection List, and you're searching for script hacks to overcome this

You're probably trying to use them in a way they were not intended, and your world will be full of frustration.

So what are multi-refs good for then?

Yes they do actually have valuable uses.

There are two main use cases where I find multi-refs valuable;

USE CASE #1 - Added non-essential info

Present a non-essential attribute of your items, like tags.

EXAMPLE - I have a Blog, and each Article has tags like _{#tech #webflow} and _#figma. I want each of these to be clickable, so that I can display e.g. all articles about _#webflow.

I'm not going to have a ton of tags, and I don't need to show them all in the main article list page, where they'd be displayed in a nested Collection List.

On the Article collection page, I can easily show all of them, because there the tags are in a regular Collection List rather than a nested one.

This is a good use case for a multi-ref field.

USE CASE #2 - Sample sets

Display a selected sampling of related items, as a convenience.

EXAMPLE - I have a list of Products and I want to show a few of the most popular Variants. On the main catalog page, I want to list my 100 top product, each with up to 5 popular variants.

This works because again, the limit of 5 is fine, and next to those 5, I will place a link titled "See all variants".

Tips

Splitting Multi-Refs

In an [A] -> [B] => [C] setup, a CL bound to [A] cannot access [C].

A small part of this access limitation can be overcome by splitting the multi-ref field into a primary single-ref and other multi-refs field.

• Primary ref would be a ref from [B] -> [C] that represents e.g. the most important category.
• Other refs would be a multi-ref from [B] => [C] that represents additional categories.

Advantages;

• This approach allows you to access some of the data you need to display in a "most important" or "sample of" kind of way.
• It works great with tools like FS filter.
• It's easy to manage

Disadvantages;

• Need to educate clients on the split ( no duplicates )
• This setup consumes two ref fields of your 5 ( CMS plan ) or 10 ( Business plan ) limit.

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