How do I return only selected certain fields in Strapi?

Question

Pretty straightforward (I hope). I'd like to be able to use the API endpoint and have it only return specified fields. I.E. something like this

http://localhost:1337/api/reference?select=["name"]

Would ideally return something of the form

[{"name": "Ref1"}]

Unfortunately that is not the case, and in actuality it returns the following.

[
{
"contributors": [
{
"username": "aduensing",
"email": "[email protected]",
"lang": "en_US",
"template": "default",
"id_ref": "1",
"provider": "local",
"id": 1,
"createdAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.349Z",
"updatedAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.360Z"
}
],
"createdBy": {
"username": "aduensing",
"email": "[email protected]",
"lang": "en_US",
"template": "default",
"id_ref": "1",
"provider": "local",
"id": 1,
"createdAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.349Z",
"updatedAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.360Z"
},
"updatedBy": {
"username": "aduensing",
"email": "[email protected]",
"lang": "en_US",
"template": "default",
"id_ref": "1",
"provider": "local",
"id": 1,
"createdAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.349Z",
"updatedAt": "2016-07-28T19:39:09.360Z"
},
"question": {
"createdBy": 1,
"createdAt": "2016-07-28T19:41:33.152Z",
"template": "default",
"lang": "en_US",
"name": "My Question",
"content": "Cool stuff, huh?",
"updatedBy": 1,
"updatedAt": "2016-07-28T19:45:02.893Z",
"id": "579a5ff83af4445c179bd8a9"
},
"createdAt": "2016-07-28T19:44:31.516Z",
"template": "default",
"lang": "en_US",
"name": "Ref1",
"link": "Google",
"priority": 1,
"updatedAt": "2016-07-28T19:45:02.952Z",
"id": "579a60ab5c8592c01f946cb5"
}
]

This immediately becomes problematic in any real world context if I decide to load 10, 20, 30, or more records at once, I and end up loading 50 times the data I needed. More bandwidth is used up, slower load times, etc.

Answer 1

How I solved this:

1. Create custom controller action (for example, 'findPaths') in contributor/controllers/contributor.js

    module.exports = {
       findPaths: async ctx => {
           const result = await strapi
               .query('contributor')
               .model.fetchAll({ columns: ['slug'] }) // here we wait for one column only
           ctx.send(result);
       }
    }

2. Add custom route (for example 'paths') in contributor/config/routes.json

    {
      "method": "GET",
      "path": "/contributors/paths",
      "handler": "contributor.findPaths",
      "config": {
        "policies": []
      }
    },

3. Add permission in admin panel for Contributor entity, path action

That's it. Now it shows only slug field from all contributor's records.

http://your-host:1337/contributors/paths