Search documents by reference field in Sanity Studio

Yes, you can search for documents based on references in Sanity Studio! There are a few ways to do this:

Built-in Reference Field Search

When you're creating or editing a document with a reference field, Sanity Studio provides built-in search functionality. According to the Connected Content documentation, a reference field in the studio lets you "search and select a document you want to reference."

For example, if you have a movie document with a cast field that references actor documents, when you're editing a movie, you can search for and select actors like Tom Cruise directly in that reference field.

Reverse Reference Search (Finding Movies with Tom Cruise)

If you want to search backwards - finding all Movies that reference a specific Actor - you have several options:

1. Using Structure Builder

You can create custom list views using the Structure Builder that filter documents based on references. For example:

S.listItem()
  .title('Movies with Tom Cruise')
  .child(
    S.documentList()
      .title('Movies with Tom Cruise')
      .filter('_type == "movie" && references($actorId)')
      .params({ actorId: 'tom-cruise-actor-id' })
  )

2. Using GROQ Queries

You can use the references() function in GROQ to find documents that reference a specific document:

*[_type == "movie" && references("actor-id-here")] {
  title,
  cast[]->{ name }
}

This finds all movies that reference the specified actor ID anywhere in their structure.

Customizing Search Behavior

According to the Studio search configuration docs, you can also customize how search works in Studio by:

• Defining custom field weights - Make certain fields (like actor names) more important in search results
• Configuring search strategies - Choose between different search implementations (groqLegacy, groq2024, textSearch)

So while the global Studio search doesn't automatically show "reverse references" out of the box, you have powerful tools to set up exactly the kind of reference-based search you need!