3_adding_collections.md

3. Adding Collections

---

Collections are an integral part of the Sevr CMS Framework. They define the storage and behavior of the data used by the CMS. In data persistence terms, a collection is how groups of related documents are stored in the MongoDB database. In the framework, collections are defined using what is called a collection definition, which is an extension of Mongoose's model schema.

For our blog, we will need to define four collections: users, posts, tags, and media. We'll use the Sevr CLI tool to create our collection definitions.

$ sevr coll users

The first line above, enters the immersive CLI interface. Secondly, the add collection command tells Sevr to create a new collection named users. The tool will create a new file, users.js, in your collections directory; It should look something like this:

module.exports = types => ({
	singular: 'User',
	fields: {},
	meta: {}
})

This is the basic structure of a collection definition, where singular is the name of the document model, fields is an object containing each of the fields, and meta is an object which holds additional data which may be needed for other functions of the framework of one of its plugins.

Next, we will need to modify this file to include each of the fields needed for this collection: name, username, email, and password. Each of these fields will need to define a label and a schemaType.

module.exports = types => ({
	singular: 'User',
	fields: {
		name: {
			label: 'Name',
			schemaType: {
				first: types.String({
					required: true,
					label: 'First'
				}),
				last: types.String({
					required: true,
					label: 'Last'
				})
			}
		},
		username: {
			label: 'Username',
			schemaType: types.String({ required: true })
		},
		email: {
			label: 'Email',
			schemaType: types.String()
		},
		password: {
			label: 'Password',
			schemaType: types.String({
				required: true,
				hidden: true
			})
		}
	},
	defaultField: 'username',
	virtuals: {
		'name.full': {
			get: function() { return this.name.first + ' ' + this.name.last }
		}
	},
	meta: {}
})

We'll follow the same procedure to create the remaining collection definitions:

// tags.js
module.exports = types => ({
	singular: 'Tag',
	fields: {
		title: {
			label: 'Title',
			schemaType: types.String({
				required: true,
				trim: true
			})
		}
	},
	defaultField: 'title',
	meta: {}
})

// posts.js
module.exports = types => ({
	singular: 'Post',
	fields: {
		title: {
			label: 'Title',
			schemaType: types.String({ required: true })
		},
		slug: {
			label: 'Slug',
			schemaType: types.String({ required: true })
		},
		content: {
			label: 'Post Content',
			schemaType: types.String()
		},
		author: {
			label: 'Author',
			schemaType: types.ObjectId({
				required: true,
				ref: 'User',
				display: 'username'
			})
		},
		tags: {
			label: 'Tags',
			schemaType: [
				types.ObjectId({
					ref: 'Tag',
					display: 'title'
				})
			]
		}
	},
	defaultField: 'title',
	meta: {}
})

// media.js
module.exports = types => ({
	singular: 'Media',
	fields: {
		path: {
			label: 'Path',
			schemaType: types.String({ required: true})
		},
		caption: {
			label: 'Caption',
			schemaType: types.String()
		}
	},
	defaultField: 'path',
	meta: {}
})

---

< Previous - Installation & Setup | Next - Adding Custom Field Types >