Data Types

Reference of data types available in Forest

Fields on Forest can either use Primitive Types or Composite Types.

Primitive types

The primitive types which are supported by Forest are the following:

Forest Type	Language Type
Boolean	Boolean
Date	String with format “1985-10-26T01:22:00-08:00Z” (ISO-8601)
Dateonly	String with format “1985-10-26”
Enum	String
JSON	Any JSON compatible value
Number	Number
Point	Array of 2 Numbers
String	String
Timeonly	String with format “01:22:00”
Uuid	String with uuid v4 format

Composite types

• Fields using composite types are not sortable and do not implement validation.
• Fields that are an array of a primitive type only are filterable (depending on the data source).

// Object containing 2 strings
const typeOfObjectWithTwoStrings = { firstName: 'String', lastName: 'String' };

// Array of strings
const typeOfArrayOfStrings = ['String'];

// Array of objects
const typeOfArrayOfObjects = [{ content: 'String' }];

// Object containing a 2d-grid of numbers
const typeOfObjectContainingAGridOfNumbers = { content: [['Number']] };

When using composite types, the data in the UI may not be displayed as you expect!

Composite Type	Example	How it gets displayed
Array of primitive type	[ 'array', 'of', 'strings']	As a custom widget in the edition form
Object	{ title: "the godfather"}	As a nested form in the edition form
Array of object	[{ title: "the shawshank redemption"}]	As a new collection in Related Data section
Array of object (with nested objects)	[{ rating: { kind: 'MPA", value: "PG-13" } }]	JSON editor in the edition form
Anything else		JSON editor in the edition form

If you want to force displaying your data as a new Collection in the Related Data section, but can’t because your data model contains nested objects, you may consider typing all nested objects as 'JSON'.