Collections & Data Modeling

Model your platform's data with collections, properties, and entities.

Concepts

Collection: a type of record in your platform — for example, "Articles", "Customers", or "Events". A collection defines the shape of its records.
Property: a single field on a collection, such as a title, a date, or an image. Each property has a name and a type.
Entity: an individual record that belongs to a collection. If "Articles" is the collection, each article is an entity.

Open Collections from your project's side menu to get started.

Creating a Collection

Go to Collections.
Click Add, enter a name, and click Create.
The new collection opens so you can define its properties.

Every new collection starts with a required Name property of type Text Input. It identifies each entity, so it can't be renamed, changed, or removed.

Defining Properties

Inside a collection you build its list of properties. Click Add Field to add a property, then set:

Property Name: how the field is labelled.
Type: the kind of value the field holds (see below).
Required: whether a value must be provided.
Regex Pattern: an optional regular expression the value must match.
Repeats: how many values the property can hold. 1 means a single value, 0 means unlimited. New properties start at 1.

Nothing is stored until you click Save. Cancel leaves the collection without keeping your changes.

Property Types

The builder offers the following field types:

Type	Use for
Text Input	Short single-line text
Text Area	Longer multi-line text
Number	Numeric values
Toggle	An on/off switch
Checkbox	A boolean check
Select	One choice from a set of options
Multi-Select	Several choices from a set of options
Date	A calendar date
Email	An email address
Phone Number	A phone number
Address	A postal address
Address (with Country)	A postal address including a country
Color	A color value
Image	An uploaded image
File	An uploaded file

Select and Multi-Select properties draw their options from the entities of a collection, so you can link records together. When you pick one of these types, a second list appears under the type to choose the linked collection. The first collection in that list is linked automatically until you pick another.

Adding Entities

Once a collection's properties are defined, you can add records:

Click Entities next to the collection in Collections, or open the collection and click View entities.
Click Add, enter a name, and click Create. The new entity opens.
Fill in the fields according to the collection's properties and click Save.

If you make a property required after entities already exist, any entity with no value for it is marked with an icon that reads "Does not match collection schema" so you can update it.

Using the CLI

An agent or script can model the same data without opening the builder:

devour sync writes the project's collections into the configuration file, each with its properties and entities.
devour setup --config <file> applies them. It creates collections that are new in the file, updates the properties of existing ones, and deletes collections that exist only on the server after asking you (--yes skips the question). Deleting a collection that still holds entities also requires --allow-data-loss.
Entities in the file are seed data. An entity whose name already exists in the collection is left as it is, so setup never overwrites live data.

See the CLI Reference for every option.