Data Builder

Define new data types and access your Airkit data

The data builder has two primary functions: to create custom app objects and access data you’ve saved in Airkit. Creating a custom app object helps you clearly define the structure of your data, and it serves to be a new data type declaration. Once you create an app object you can save data to Airkit using a connection with the app object serving as the data definition.

Creating custom data types

There are 3 different types of objects you can add: app, place, or schedule. Place and schedule objects are specifically designed to work with our mapping and scheduling components. App objects are user defined objects, which are a composite of any number of primitive types or other custom defined app objects. App objects serve as custom data types that you can use through your app building process, and creating them can help build out and scaffold forms inside our web canvas. You can add any one of these by clicking on the plus button at the top of the tree.

Accessing your data stored in Airkit

In order to save data, you’ll need to build a connection with the Object-Service step type. For more information, checkout the connection builder documentation and checkout our lesson on how to build a connection.

Once you’ve saved data, click on one of your objects in the tree to see all the data associated with that object. You can select on any given cell to modify data, and you can scroll to the last row to add new data to this.

Restricting Data

Restricting data allows you to limit the data entry to only values that you pre-define. You can add all the potential values of this field, which then will be the only potential values for that field.

Formatter vs Parser

Fromatters and Parsers allow you to modify the way that data is saved and displayed. You can utilize Airscript to alter the format of the displayed data. To reference the data, use the namespace@ - @ will correspond to the field data.

Formatter

Changes how the data will be viewed.

Parser

Changes how the data will be stored.

Exporting Data

Any data that you store in Object-Service can be exported to a CSV. To do so, click on the App Object and click on the export CSV button, located in the Inspector.

Filters

Filters reduce the data in the protal page based on the selected filter option. These filter options can ensure that a specific filed has a value, meets a certain threshold, or is equal to a specific value.

These filter options are available in Portal Builder. Filters created inside Portal Builder are applied to all users that view the portal page and are not editable outside of Portal Builder.

Constraints & Validation

Validation

There are 3 validation rules that you can add to an app object field.

Is Required

Ensures that this field must have data if its being entered by a user. The field could still have empty data inside Object-Service. This coupled with Not Null ensures that data always is present.

Length is Within Range

You can set an upper and lower bound on the length of the data. This will perform the Airscript function LENGTH on your input. Click here for more details on LENGTH.

Custom Rule

The Custom Rule option utilizes Airscript to allow you to create more complex validation rules.

Constraints

There are 4 Unique Constraints that you can add to an app object field.

Unique

Marking a field as Unique signifies that this column can be used as a primary key - a way to identify a single row of data.

Not Null

Ensures that this field must have a value and that value cannot be NULL. This constraint is helpful in requiring input if you decide to create a Data Grid Portal page.

Default Value

Provides a default value to this field. If no data is entered by the user, this value will be recored into Object-Service

User Variable

Adding the User Variable constraint to a field acts as a row-level permissioning for the data.