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Sanity previewDrafts perspective not returning draft posts in Next.js

9 replies
Last updated: Nov 29, 2025
Sanity/next caching drives me crazy... I have a server component in next a page which just does this:

export default async function BlogOverviewPage() {
  const posts = await getAllPosts();

  return <>work with the posts object</>
Here is the getAllPosts();


export async function getAllPosts() {
  const DEFAULT_TAGS = ["post"] as string[];
  if (client) {
    const result = await client.fetch(postquery, {}, {
      //cache: "force-cache",
      next: {
        revalidate: 60 // for simple, time-based revalidation
        //tags: DEFAULT_TAGS, // for tag-based revalidation
      }
    });
    console.log("# Items: "+result.length);
    return result || [];
  }
  return [];
}
client is using previewDrafts perspective. When running this query, i see in NextJS console the sanity query. When i copy this query to the Vision tool in the studio, i get all my draft posts and my one published post. When i run this via NextJS, the logging output from the logging line you see here is always (and forver 1). The publsihed item only. I really dont know what this is. Anybody an idea?
AI Update

I can see what's happening here! When using the previewDrafts perspective, you must provide an authentication token and set useCdn: false in your client configuration. Without these, the client silently falls back to only returning published content, which is exactly what you're experiencing.

Here's what you need to fix:

import { createClient } from '@sanity/client'

const client = createClient({
  projectId: 'your-project-id',
  dataset: 'your-dataset',
  apiVersion: '2024-01-01',
  useCdn: false, // CRITICAL: Must be false for draft content
  token: process.env.SANITY_API_TOKEN, // CRITICAL: Must have read token
  perspective: 'previewDrafts',
})

The key requirements for previewDrafts perspective are:

  1. useCdn: false - The CDN only serves published content, so you must query the origin API directly
  2. token - You need a read token with permissions to view drafts (create one in your Sanity project settings)
  3. Token permissions - The token must have "Viewer" or higher permissions

Without both of these, the Sanity client will only return published documents, even though you've set the perspective to previewDrafts. This is a security feature - draft content requires authentication.

In Vision tool, you're already authenticated through Studio, which is why you see all drafts there. But your Next.js client needs explicit authentication.

Important security note: Since you're using this in a Server Component, the token stays server-side and won't be exposed to the browser. Never use a token in client-side code.

Also, your Next.js caching configuration looks fine. The revalidate: 60 will work correctly once you fix the client configuration. The issue isn't with Next.js caching - it's that your client is silently failing to fetch drafts due to missing authentication.

For a complete setup with Draft Mode in Next.js App Router, check out the Visual Editing with Next.js documentation which covers the full authentication flow.

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