Collection

A collection is a container for objects. Collections are used to organize and share objects with other users. Objects from any object type can be stored to a collection, and they can belong to multiple collections (unlike pools).

The collections build a hierarchy, which is represented by the relation collection._id_parent in the collection object. When searching collections, easydb offers special attributes relating to the collection hierarchy (_path and _level).

Easydb creates automatically some “system collections”. These collections cannot be deleted or moved in the collection hierarchy (that is, change their _id_parent).

Attributes

The following fields are only present when searching: _has_acl, _level, _path.

* Remarks:

• _id has to be set for POST operations
• the hierarchy begins at level 1. The array in _path only contains the fields _basetype, _has_acl, _count and collection
• _path.collection._id is searchable as a Number
• the fields _level and _path are only provided by /api/search
• _groups.group._id is searchable as Number
• _owner.user._id is searchable as Number

Notice that all collections must have a valid _id_parent (except for the root collection, which is a system collection).

** _hotfolder_upload_urls

This array contains all available upload urls for the hotfolder for this collection. The URLs are generated from the configured Hotfolder URLs.

The type is the same as it is specified in the configuration. The url is generated using the following pattern:

<configured url> <configured separator> <server instance> <configured separator> <collection uuid>

Based on the example configuration, with the server instance d3cea042-64f0-4e8b-b5a5-c3f30390648c and the collection uuid 860f45c0-3586-4249-b490-b9ee68eac6cf, the generated hotfolder URLs will be the following:

"_hotfolder_upload_urls": [
    {
        "type": "windows_webdav",
        "url": "\\easydb.example.com@SSL\upload\collection\d3cea042-64f0-4e8b-b5a5-c3f30390648c\860f45c0-3586-4249-b490-b9ee68eac6cf"
    },
    {
        "type": "webdav_http",
        "url": "https://easydb.example.com/upload/collection/d3cea042-64f0-4e8b-b5a5-c3f30390648c/860f45c0-3586-4249-b490-b9ee68eac6cf"
    }
]

*** webfrontend_props

It’s an optional object with extra properties that the frontend can set and retrieve. This JSON map needs to be updated carefully by clients.

It is also used to store the definition of a presentation that is based on the collection (see below).

Clients should only update the parts they care about and write back other parts which might have been written by other clients.

Presentation

Slide

Slides has four different types: start, one, duo and bullets

Slide start and bullets

Both includes a title and a description, the difference is that the description for type bullets will have a bullet for each newline. Also there will be just one start slide which will be the first slide.

Slide one

It will show just one object and will be rendered depending show_info property value.

Slide duo

It’s similar to type one, with the difference that it will show two objecs vertically rendered

Example

"presentation": {
    "settings": {
        "show_info": "standard-info"
    },
    "slide_idx": 0,
    "slides": [
        {
            "type": "start",
            "data": {
                "title": "Presentation title",
                "info": "This is a long description."
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "one",
            "center": {
                "global_object_id": "2@aefb0f5c-75b1-4779-a128-1264d527cabb"
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "duo",
            "left": {
                "global_object_id": "2@aefb0f5c-75b1-4779-a128-1264d527cabb"
            },
            "right": {
                "global_object_id": "4@aefb0f5c-75b1-4779-a128-1264d527cabb"
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "bullets",
            "data": {
                "info": "Bullet 1\nBullet 2\nBullet 3\nBullet 4",
                "title": "This is a title"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Owner

The collection always has an owner. On creation, it is set automatically by the server to the parent collection’s owner.

System collections

All collections created by users are directly or indirectly under their user collection. When a user is deleted, the user collection is deleted, along with its subtree.

Create object properties

A user can create an object directly into a collection if they have the right create_in_collection. The properties under collection.create_object define what kind of objects can be created and how the should be populated:

If objecttype is null, the value is inherited from the parent collection and so on. If no collection in the hierarchy has set an objecttype, no object can be created.

The mask and the EAS field are taken from the same collection where the objecttype is defined, in order to avoid incorrect objecttype-mask-field combinations.

If pool_id is null, the value is inherited from the parent collection and so on. If no collection in the hierarchy has set a pool ID and the object requires a pool, no object can be created.

The attributes eas_field and tags are only relevant to the frontend.

The result of inheriting the create object properties is provided in the field _create_object_compiled.

Related operations

• /collection: CRUD operations on collections
• /search: Search type “collection”
• /db: create objects in collections with POST/PUT and parameter collection