We’re excited to announce a significant enhancement to TinaCMS: Referential Integrity! This new feature ensures that references between documents remain consistent and error-free, even when linked documents are renamed or deleted. Let’s dive into what’s included and what it means for your content management workflows.

Part 1: Automatic Updates for Renamed Documents (Completed)

Referential Integrity ensures that when a document is renamed, all related references are updated automatically. This is a massive win for users who frequently update file names while managing complex interlinked content.

Example:

• Renaming the document content/authors/napoleon.md to content/authors/napy.md will instantly update all posts or pages that reference “Napoleon” to point to the new name “Napy.”

This seamless synchronization eliminates the manual effort of finding and updating references across your site.

Part 2: Cleaning Up References for Deleted Documents (Completed)

Deleting a document? No problem! With Referential Integrity, TinaCMS will:

• Warn you before the deletion to prevent accidental changes.
• Automatically remove all references to the deleted document once confirmed.

Example:

• Deleting an author document for “Pedro” ensures that any blog post referencing “Pedro” will have the reference cleared, maintaining a clean and error-free database.

What’s Next?

This feature is now live in tinacms@2.5.0. However, we’re not stopping here. Future improvements will expand on this foundation to support even more robust reference tracking and management for other file types and use cases.

In the meantime, you can explore this new functionality by upgrading to the latest version and testing it in your project. Your feedback will help us continue refining TinaCMS to meet your content management needs.

Learn More

• Dive into the technical details and test cases here.
• Share your thoughts and feature requests on GitHub!

Thank you for being part of the TinaCMS journey. We’re committed to making content management as efficient and enjoyable as possible.

Best,
The TinaCMS Team 🦙

Last Edited: November 19, 2024