Arrays in schemas

Arrays in schemas

Let's say you're managing "companies," and each company has several "offices." Wouldn't it be nice if you could edit a list of offices while editing the company?

This is easy to do with the array field type. Arrays are a great way to manage a list of objects, with their own schema, that are nested inside your object.

When to use arrays

You should use arrays when:

• The items in the array are clearly constituent parts of your larger document
• You don't need to refer to those items from other documents
• The items in the array don't have an independent life of their own that should continue if the larger document is gone
• You will not have thousands of items, pushing MongoDB's limit for a single document and impacting performance

If your needs don't match these requirements, you should use use joins instead.

Example

{
  name: 'offices',
  label: 'Offices',
  type: 'array',
  schema: [
    {
      name: 'city',
      label: 'City',
      type: 'string'
    },
    {
      name: 'zip',
      label: 'Zip',
      type: 'string',
      def: '19147'
    },
    {
      name: 'thumbnail',
      label: 'Thumbnail',
      type: 'singleton',
      widgetType: 'slideshow',
      options: {
        limit: 1
      }
    }
  ]
}

Each array has its own schema, which supports all of the usual field types. You an even nest an array in another array.

It's easy to access the resulting information in a page template, such as the show template for companies. The array property is... you guessed it... an array! Not hard to iterate over at all:

<h4>Offices</h4>
<ul>
  {% for office in item.offices %}
    <li>{{ office.city }}, {{ office.zip }}</li>
  {% endfor %}
</ul>

Areas and thumbnails are allowed in arrays. In order to display them in a page template, you'll need to use this syntax:

{% for office in item.offices %}
  {{ aposSingleton({ area: office.thumbnail, type: 'slideshow', more options... }) }}
{% endfor %}

For an area you would write:

{% for office in item.offices %}
  {{ aposArea({ area: office.body, more options... }) }}
{% endfor %}

Since the area is not a direct property of the page, we can't use the (page, areaname) syntax that is typically more convenient.

Areas and thumbnails in arrays can be edited "in context" on a page.

Also check out schema widgets for an alternative approach to related problems.