Exclude Items by Default

The Exclude Items by Default feature allows folderish content types to omit child items from the REST API response. This avoids unnecessary catalog queries for blocks-based content where child items are already provided via Simplelayout blocks (slblocks).

Overview

By default, the REST API response for any folderish content includes up to 25 child items. For blocks-based pages this is wasted computation — the frontend uses slblocks for rendering, not items.

When the IExcludeItemsByDefault behavior is active on a content type, the REST API serializer returns:

  • items: empty list ([])

  • items_total: 0

  • slblocks: populated as usual

The exclusion can be overridden per-request with the query parameter force_include_items=1.

REST API

Default Response (items excluded)

const response = await fetch('/Plone/my-page', {
    headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json' }
});
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.items);        // []
console.log(data.items_total);  // 0
console.log(data.slblocks);     // [...] blocks still present

Force Including Items

Pass force_include_items=1 to bypass the exclusion and retrieve child items normally:

const response = await fetch('/Plone/my-page?force_include_items=1', {
    headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json' }
});
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.items);        // [{...}, {...}, ...]
console.log(data.items_total);  // 5

import requests

response = requests.get(
    'http://localhost:8080/Plone/my-page',
    params={'force_include_items': '1'},
    headers={'Accept': 'application/json'}
)
data = response.json()
print(data['items'])

Configuration

The behavior is opt-in. To activate it on a content type, add wcs.backend.content.behaviors.exclude_items.IExcludeItemsByDefault to the FTI’s behaviors list via GenericSetup:

<object name="MyContentType" meta_type="Dexterity FTI">
  <property name="behaviors" purge="false">
    <element value="wcs.backend.content.behaviors.exclude_items.IExcludeItemsByDefault"/>
  </property>
</object>