[Request]: lifecycle documentation improvement

[dieguezz]

Summary

when updating an item through a lifecycle hook, for some reason you cannot do it from a third function.

ie: this will not update the data

  function foo(event) {
    event.params.data.foo = 'foo'
  }
  beforeUpdate(event) {
    foo(event)
  }

Instead you need to do something like:

  function foo(event) { 
    return event.params.data.whatever ? 'foo' : 'bar'
  }
  beforeUpdate(event) {
    event.params.data.foo = foo(event)
  }

And js works passing a reference, as you can check here So this is definately weird and should be documented if that is the expected behavior

Why is it needed?

Its needed because if for example you want to run the same logic under two hooks, its normal that you want to abstract this logic like shown in first example instead of:

module.exports = {
  beforeUpdate(event) {
    event.params.data.foo = await beforeUpdateOrCreate(event);
  },
  beforeCreate(event) {
    event.params.data.foo = await beforeUpdateOrCreate(event);
  },
};

Suggested solution(s)

Just fix the behavior or document it

Related issue(s)/PR(s)

No response

[pwizla]

Thank you for opening this issue, and apologies for the late reply. Would you like to update yourself? Community contributions to the Strapi documentation are always welcome.

Feel free to use the various contribution resources below:

• Contribution guide
• 12 rules of Technical Writing
• Strapi documentation style guide

Thank you!