Collections

Collections represent a single table in our Database.

Naming Convention

Let's assume, we have a table called posts, and we want to have a Collection for that. We may choose to follow a convention that our Collection names will always be the CamelCased version of the table's name.

For example, a list of table names with their possible Collection name:

• posts → Posts
• questions → Questions
• office_supplies → OfficeSupplies
• superhero_names → SuperheroNames

Defining a Collection

Given we want to create a new Collection called Posts for the table posts, we would create a new file in ./collections/Posts.js:

// ./collections/Posts.js
var db = require('../config/db');

module.exports = db.createCollection({
  table: 'posts'
});

And that's it really. That's the minimum configuration you need to create a Collection.

But let's go a bit ahead, and look at other options too.

Alias

Aliases are useful when queries are involved with multiple tables. We can have convention to always have the alias of a Collection by its name in singular form.

For example, a list of Collection names with their possible aliases:

• Posts → Post
• OfficeSupplies → OfficeSupply
• Questions → Question

So we can go ahead with the alias as Post here:

var db = require('../config/db');

module.exports = db.createCollection({
  table: 'posts',

  alias: 'Post'
});

Schema

firenze.js is capable of creating tables in your database by reading the schema defined in Collection level. This can be read further in the Migration section.

But to define it:

var db = require('../config/db');

module.exports = db.createCollection({
  table: 'posts',

  alias: 'Post',

  schema: {
    id: {
      type: 'increments',
      primary: true
    },
    title: {
      type: 'string',
      length: 100
    }
  }
});

Validations

Validation rules can be set per field when defining the schema in a Collection:

var db = require('../config/db');

module.exports = db.createCollection({
  table: 'posts',

  alias: 'Post',

  schema: {
    id: {
      type: 'increments',
      primary: true
    },
    title: {
      type: 'string',
      length: 100,
      validate: [
        {
          rule: 'isAlphanumeric',
          message: 'Title must be alphanumeric.'
        }
      ]
    }
  }
});

Read more about it in Validation section.