Feature Request: Real-time API Search for Integration Fields

[dimaportenko]

Feature Request: Real-time API Search for Integration Fields

Problem

Currently, Prismic Integration Fields work by pulling the entire catalog from a Custom API endpoint every 30 minutes. This approach has significant limitations:

• Not scalable for large catalogs — Shopify stores with thousands of products must expose their entire product catalog to Prismic, which is slow, wasteful, and impractical.
• Stale data — The 30-minute sync interval means newly added products aren't immediately available to content editors.
• No search delegation — Prismic handles search/filtering internally over the cached dataset, ignoring the fact that external systems (Shopify, Algolia, etc.) already have optimized search capabilities.

Proposed Solution

Add support for real-time API search in Integration Fields. Instead of pulling all data upfront, Prismic would call the Custom API endpoint with a search query parameter as the editor types:

GET https://example.com/api/prismic/integration/products?q=marble&page=1

How it would work

1. Editor opens the Integration Field and starts typing a product name
2. Prismic sends a GET request to the configured API URL with ?q=<search_term>&page=<number>
3. The API returns matching results in the existing { results_size, results } format
4. Editor selects a result, and the blob is stored in the document as usual

Benefits

• Works with any catalog size — No need to import thousands of products into Prismic
• Always fresh data — Results come directly from the source system in real-time
• Leverages existing search — External systems like Shopify, Algolia, Elasticsearch already have optimized search; let them handle it
• Simpler API implementation — Developers only need to implement a search endpoint, not a paginated full-catalog export
• Backwards compatible — The existing pull-based approach continues to work for smaller catalogs

Suggested API contract

GET <catalog_url>?q=<search_term>&page=<page_number>

Response (same as current format):
{
  "results_size": 5,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "unique-id",
      "title": "Product Title",
      "description": "Description",
      "image_url": "https://...",
      "last_update": 1234567890,
      "blob": { ... }
    }
  ]
}

Configuration

A new option in the catalog settings to choose the mode:

• Pull mode (current behavior) — Prismic syncs all data every 30 minutes
• Search mode (new) — Prismic queries the API in real-time with the editor's search term

Use Case

We use Prismic with a Shopify store that has thousands of products. Content editors need to select specific products for promotional banners slice. The current options are:

1. Integration Field with Pull API — Requires importing the full Shopify catalog into Prismic. Too slow and wasteful for selecting 2-3 products.
2. Plain Text field — Editors manually type Shopify product handles/IDs. Error-prone, no validation, no preview.

A search-based Integration Field would give editors a product picker UI without requiring a full catalog import.

[xrutayisire]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write such a detailed proposal, it’s super helpful.

You’re highlighting real limitations of Integration Fields, especially at scale, and this is something we’re aware of and keeping on our radar.

That said, our current focus is elsewhere, so we don’t plan to make changes to this area in the near future. We’ll keep this issue open so we can come back to your proposal when priorities shift.

Thanks for your understanding,
Xavier