Why doesn't strapi's `find()` query return an array?

Question

Context

I have a front end app that requires an array of blog posts from the API, and when you call http://strapi-url/posts/ with a GET request, it returns all the results as objects in an array. Happy days.

Problem

Eventually I want to have more complex GET options with query params, so I need to modify the post controller and write a custom function for find().

When I modify the find() function in api/post/controllers/post.js , and just make it return the result of strapi.query('post').find(), it returns an object with keys rather than an array.

Code

 async find(ctx) {
    let entity = await.strapi.query('post').find();
    return sanitizeEntity(entity, { model: strapi.models.post });
  },

I know I could simply convert it into an array in the front end, but feels like a messy solution, and I would rather understand why it doesn't return an array, and what would be the best way to approach a solution.

Answer 1

The code in sanitizeEntity actually does this. You can check it out in the source code(node_modules/strapi-utils/lib/sanitize-entity.js). Also you can see this by dropping the sanitizeEntity row - you will get an array from await.strapi.query('post').find().

You can run the following test (add a custom endpoint) to see the results:

  async test2(ctx) {
    let entity = await strapi.query('post').find();
    ctx.send({
      message: 'okay',
      posts: entity,
      sanitizedPosts: sanitizeEntity(entity, { model: strapi.models.post })
    }, 200);
  }

You can solve it by making your own custom sanitize function which returns an array OR by processing the result before returning it like so:

let entity = await strapi.query('post').find();
let sanitizedEntity = sanitizeEntity(entity, { model: strapi.models.post });
//process sanitized results to an array 
//return the result as array