Node.js Developer Guide
Other documentationsDemoCommunityGitHub
  • Forest Admin
  • Getting started
    • How it works
    • Quick start
    • Install
      • Create your agent
      • Expose an HTTP endpoint
        • For standalone agents
        • On Express
        • On Koa
        • On Fastify
        • On NestJS
      • Autocompletion & Typings
      • Troubleshooting
    • Migrating legacy agents
      • What's new
      • Pre-requisites
      • Recommendations
      • Migration steps
        • Run new agent in parallel
        • Configure database connection
        • Code transformations
          • API Charts
          • Live Queries
          • Smart Charts
          • Route overrides
          • Smart Actions
          • Smart Fields
          • Smart Relationships
          • Smart Segments
        • Compare schemas
        • Swap agents
      • Post-migration
        • Dropping Sequelize
        • Optimize your agent
  • Data Sources
    • Getting Started
      • Collection selection
      • Naming conflicts
      • Cross-data source relationships
      • Query interface and Native Queries
        • Fields and projections
        • Filters
        • Aggregations
    • Provided data sources
      • SQL (without ORM)
      • Sequelize
      • Mongoose
      • MongoDB
    • Write your own
      • Replication strategy
        • Persistent cache
        • Updating the replica
          • Scheduled rebuilds
          • Change polling
          • Push & Webhooks
        • Schema & References
        • Write handlers
      • Translation strategy
        • Structure declaration
        • Capabilities declaration
        • Read implementation
        • Write implementation
        • Intra-data source Relationships
      • Contribute
  • Agent customization
    • Getting Started
    • Actions
      • Scope and context
      • Result builder
      • Static Forms
      • Widgets in Forms
      • Dynamic Forms
      • Form layout customization
      • Related data invalidation
    • Charts
      • Value
      • Objective
      • Percentage
      • Distribution
      • Leaderboard
      • Time-based
    • Fields
      • Add fields
      • Move, rename and remove fields
      • Override binary field mode
      • Override writing behavior
      • Override filtering behavior
      • Override sorting behavior
      • Validation
    • Hooks
      • Collection hook
      • Collection override
    • Pagination
    • Plugins
      • Provided plugins
        • AWS S3
        • Advanced Export
        • Flattener
      • Write your own
    • Relationships
      • To a single record
      • To multiple records
      • Computed foreign keys
      • Under the hood
    • Search
    • Segments
  • Frontend customization
    • Smart Charts
      • Create a table chart
      • Create a bar chart
      • Create a cohort chart
      • Create a density map
    • Smart Views
      • Create a Map view
      • Create a Calendar view
      • Create a Shipping view
      • Create a Gallery view
      • Create a custom tinder-like validation view
      • Create a custom moderation view
  • Deploying to production
    • Environments
      • Deploy on AWS
      • Deploy on Heroku
      • Deploy on GCP
      • Deploy on Ubuntu
      • Deploy on Azure
    • Development workflow
    • Using branches
    • Deploying your changes
    • Forest Admin CLI commands
      • init
      • login
      • branch
      • switch
      • set-origin
      • push
      • environments:create
      • environments:reset
      • deploy
  • Under the hood
    • .forestadmin-schema.json
    • Data Model
      • Typing
      • Relationships
    • Security & Privacy
Powered by GitBook
On this page

Was this helpful?

  1. Getting started

How it works

PreviousForest AdminNextQuick start

Last updated 1 year ago

Was this helpful?

This is the official documentation of the @forestadmin/agent Node.js agent.

Before you start writing a single line of code, it’s a good idea to get an overview of how Forest Admin works. The magic lies in its architecture.

Forest Admin provides you with:

  • An API, hosted on your server, to retrieve your data. We call it the Agent. It can be a standalone project or embedded within your app.

  • A user interface, to access and manage your data from your browser. This Forest Admin User Interface is built and managed through resources hosted on Forest Admin's servers.

The agent

The agent is generated upon installation and hosted on your end.

It includes an API allowing you to translate calls made from the Forest Admin UI into queries to your database (covering actions such as CRUD, search & filters, pagination, sorting, etc.).

It also provides the Forest Admin servers with the information needed to build the User Interface (the Forest Admin Schema). This information includes table names, column names and types, and relationships. It is sent when you run your agent within a file called forestadmin-schema.json.

For a more in-depth explanation of Forest Admin's architecture (the Node.JS agent version), please read the .

following article ↗
The agent is a Node.JS REST API hosted on your servers