Schema & Objects
- PIPEFORCE
Licenses | COMMUNITY, ENTERPRISE, CORPORATE |
Since | VERSION 6.0 |
Introduction
Objects in PIPEFORCE are custom models that represent data of a specific app or process. For example an Invoice or Person object. The structure of such objects can by defined using a Schema. Also forms need such a Schema for its field structure.
The Schema
For example before you can use a form, you need to know which “type of data” such a form produces: After a form was submitted, it creates a new data set called an object and stores it into the property store. The structure of such an object (which fields it has) is defined in a JSON Schema.
JSON Schema is a formalized format to describe data structures in the JSON document format. It is similar to XML Schema, DTD or Database Schemas, but a lot easier.
See here for more details about JSON schema: https://json-schema.org/
PIPEFORCE Forms are built on top of JSON schema. Therefore, the first step to create a form is always to create a JSON schema configuration or using an existing one.
But also in other areas beside forms it is meaningful to define a JSON Schema first before you start to work with data models in your application.
Here is an example of how such a JSON schema can look like defining an person object:
{
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"firstName": {
"type": "string"
},
"lastName": {
"type": "string"
},
"age": {
"type": "number"
},
"gender": {
"type": "string",
"enum": ["male", "female", "neutral"]
}
}
}You can see that it defines four fields of different types: The firstName, lastName, age and gender of a person. Within your application you can then refer to it at any place as the model with a clearly defined structure.
By default, a JSON schema which describes an object within PIPEORCE is placed in a property using this key path:
global/app/<APP>/object/<NAME>/v1/schemaWhereas <APP> is the name of the app, the object belongs to and <NAME> is the name of the object. In the example of a person which is part of the app myApp, you could use this path to access the object schema in a unique way from within the overall PIPEFORCE instance:
global/app/myApp/object/person/v1/schemaDefault form rendering
The JSON schema will be used as a base to render the fields defined in it as a form. By default all fields are rendered vertically (each in a row) as you can see here:
