What's New for Modeling in Saleor 3.22
Saleor 3.22 adds new modeling features — single references, scoped types, category & collection links — to make domain modeling cleaner and more flexible.
When we first introduced modeling, we said it wasn’t just about slapping a new label on old features. It’s a different way of looking at Saleor — one that will shape how the platform grows. Instead of bending your business into “products” and “orders” alone, you can bring your actual domain into the engine.
With 3.22, we’re taking that idea further. This release adds a bunch of small but powerful changes that make models more expressive and way easier to work with in real-world setups:
What's New
Single Reference
Reference attributes now let you decide whether a field points to one object or many.
Take a product like the iPhone 17 Pro. It should belong to one brand (Model Type: Brand) — Apple — not a whole list of them. With single reference attributes, you can enforce that one-to-one relationship instead of leaving the field open to multiple values. It keeps the data consistent and avoids awkward edge cases.
Narrow Down Reference Type
Reference attributes can also be scoped to specific types, so you can link only to the models or products that actually make sense.
Besides the Brand model type, you might also have a Blog Post model type for lightweight CMS content. When creating a product like the iPhone 17 Pro, you want to link it only to a Brand model — Apple — not to a random blog post. With scoped references, you can define that the attribute only connects to Brand models, keeping the relationship clean and predictable.
Category & Collection Reference
Categories and collections can now be used as reference targets, letting your custom models plug directly into the catalog structure.
Say you’re modeling a Vendor. Instead of treating their catalog as loose metadata, you can link the vendor straight to a category that groups all of their products. That category can branch into subcategories, giving you a clear hierarchy of what the vendor offers — all modeled natively inside Saleor.
Misc Changes
Alongside the new modeling features, 3.22 also brings some handy improvements to models. You can now filter and search models with where and search, including full-text and complex logic. Models can also be filtered by attributes, and there’s a new attribute field on the Model type for querying specific attributes by slug.
That’s it for the modeling side of 3.22. There’s plenty more happening in this release, so check out the other posts if you want the full picture.