Developer Guide
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  • Forest Admin
  • Getting Started
    • Quick start
    • Development workflow
  • Reference Guide
    • How it works
      • Environments
      • Developing on Forest Admin
        • Using branches
        • Deploying your changes
        • Forest CLI commands
          • init
          • login
          • branch
          • switch
          • set-origin
          • push
          • environments:reset
          • environments:create
          • deploy
          • schema:diff [beta]
        • Express packages
    • Models
      • Enrich your models
      • Relationships
        • Create a Smart relationship
          • GetIdsFromRequest
        • Smart Relationship Examples
          • Smart hasMany relationship in mongoDB
    • Actions
      • Create and manage Smart Actions
        • Use a Smart Action Form
        • Use a Smart Action Intent
      • Smart Action Examples
        • Calculate the distance between two string addresses
        • Impersonate a user
        • Create a record with a multiselect through a many-to-many relationship
        • Handle enums with alias labels in a smart action
        • Dropdown with list of values in smart action form
        • Custom dynamic dropdown in a form using smart collections
        • Refresh hasMany relationship in smart action
        • Smart segment to restrict access to an action on a record details view
        • BelongsToMany edition through smart collection
        • Upload files to amazon s3
        • Upload several files with the File Picker
        • Retrieve smart field info in a smart action
        • Smart action to create several records from the input of a single smart action form
        • Add many existing records at the same time (hasMany-belongsTo relationship)
        • Call a webhook with record ids
        • Bulk update records
    • Smart Fields
      • Smart Field Examples
        • Add an HTML credit card as a smart field in a summary view
        • Display field with complex info in html format (rich text editor)
        • Generate signed urls to display S3 files in a smart field
        • Print a status object in a single line field
        • Sort by smart field
        • Sort by smart field that includes value from a belongsTo relationship
        • Add fields destined to the create form
        • Add validation to a smart field edition
        • Display smart field as progress bar using rich text editor
        • Update point geometry field using a smart field and algolia api
    • Smart Collections
      • Examples
        • Create a Smart Collection with Amazon S3
        • Smart relationship between model and stripe cards
        • Create records from a Smart collection
        • Searchable smart collection with records fetched from hubspot API
      • Serializing your records
    • Routes
      • Default routes
      • Extend a route
      • Override a route
    • Integrations
      • Stripe
      • Mixpanel
      • Intercom
      • Elasticsearch
        • Interact with your Elasticsearch data
        • Elasticsearch service/utils
        • Another example
      • Zendesk
        • Authentication, Filtering & Sorting
        • Display Zendesk tickets
        • Display Zendesk users
        • View tickets related to a user
        • Bonus: Direct link to Zendesk + change priority of a ticket
      • Dwolla
        • Display Dwolla customers
        • Display Dwolla funding sources
        • Display Dwolla transfers
        • Link users and Dwolla customers
        • Dwolla Service
      • Razorpay
      • Hubspot
        • Create a Hubspot company
        • Display Hubspot companies
      • Twilio
        • Send an SMS with Twilio and Zapier
      • Azure Table Storage
      • Slack
        • Send Smart Action notifications to Slack
      • Algolia
        • Geocode an address with Algolia
    • 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 dynamic calendar view for an event-booking use case
      • Create a custom moderation view
    • Smart Segments
    • Scopes
      • Create a scope more than one level away based on a Smart field
      • Scope on a smart field extracting a json's column attribute
    • Performance
    • Charts
      • Create an API-based Chart
      • Create a Smart Chart
      • Create Charts with AWS Redshift
  • Extra help
    • Setup
      • Install
      • Connecting Forest Admin to Your Database (Forest Cloud)
      • Forest Admin IP white-listing (Forest Cloud)
      • Why HTTPS is necessary even locally
      • Troubleshooting
      • Prevent permission errors at installation
      • Deploy your admin backend to AWS
      • Deploy your admin backend on Heroku
      • Deploy your admin backend to Ubuntu server
      • Deploy your admin backend to Google Cloud Platform
      • Install Forest Admin on a remote machine
      • Use Forest Admin with a read-only database
      • Configuring CORS headers
      • Running Forest Admin on multiple servers
      • Flatten nested fields (MongoDB)
    • Upgrade
      • Upgrade notes (Rails)
        • Upgrade to v9
        • Upgrade to v8
        • Upgrade to v7
        • Upgrade to v6
        • Upgrade to v5
        • Upgrade to v4
        • Upgrade to v3
      • Upgrade notes (SQL, Mongodb)
        • Upgrade to v9
        • Upgrade to v8
        • Upgrade to v7
        • Upgrade to v6
        • Upgrade to v5
        • Upgrade to v4
        • Upgrade to v3
      • Update your models' definition
      • Monitor your Forest's status
      • Manage your Forest Admin environments programmatically
      • Changing your domain name
      • Migrate to the new role system
      • Push your new version to production
    • Databases
      • Use a demo SQL database
      • Use a demo MongoDB database
      • Populate a postgreSQL database on Heroku
      • Connect to a read replica database
      • Plug multiple schemas
      • Add new databases
      • Manage SQL views
    • Settings
      • Customize your /forest folder
      • Disable automatic Forest Admin schema update
      • Include/exclude models
      • Display extensive logs
      • Laravel specific settings
    • Releases Support
    • Other documentations
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  1. Reference Guide

Models

⚠️ This page and sub-pages are relevant only if you installed Forest Admin directly on a database (SQL/Mongodb). If you installed in a Rails/Django/Laravel app, you manage your models like you normal

PreviousExpress packagesNextEnrich your models

Last updated 1 year ago

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Please be sure of your agent type and version and pick the right documentation accordingly.

This is the documentation of the forest-express-sequelize and forest-express-mongoose Node.js agents that will soon reach end-of-support.

forest-express-sequelize v9 and forest-express-mongoose v9 are replaced by v1.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

This is still the latest Ruby on Rails documentation of the forest_liana agent, you’re at the right place, please read on.

This is the documentation of the django-forestadmin Django agent that will soon reach end-of-support.

If you’re using a Django agent, notice that django-forestadmin v1 is replaced by v1.

If you’re using a Flask agent, go to the v1 documentation.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

This is the documentation of the forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin Laravel agent that will soon reach end-of-support.

If you’re using a Laravel agent, notice that forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin v1 is replaced by v3.

If you’re using a Symfony agent, go to the v1 documentation.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

Models

Your models are located in /models. They control a big part of your Forest UI.

Reflecting your database changes in your UI

When you install for the first time, Lumber introspects your database and generates your models accordingly.

Afterwards, here's how your database changes can be rendered in your Forest UI:

Updating your models automatically

If you made many changes or even added a new table/collection, we recently reintroduced a programmatic way to help you manage the associated file changes:

This feature requires an agent version 7 or higher.

  • Generate files which, after introspecting your database, appear to be missing in your folders (models , routes & forest). Eg. Adding a new table and launching schema:update within your project directory should generate the associated models/routes & forest files

  • Generate a correct project architecture to easily manage multiple databases. After your onboarding (on a single database), update the config/databases.js file to add a new connection, launch schema:update and your models should be set correctly

forest schema:update will never modify your code base (remove files, move files, change file content). It's up to you to copy some (or all) of the generated contents into your existing files/folders.

Note that forest schema:update options are as follows:

  • -c or --config , allowing to specify a path for the config file to user (Default to ./config/databases.js)

  • -o or --output-directory : Create a directory named after the config parameter provided. It will also redump all the models/routes/forest file in a specific directory, allowing the end-user to pick code modification.

This command need to be launched at the root of the project directory, where the .env should be, since it is required by config/databases.js file.

Enriching your models

Lumber does some of the work for you. However, you remain in control of your models.

On the following page, we'll cover how you can enrich your models:

The .forestadmin-schema.json file

On server start, a .forestadmin-schema.json file will be auto-generated in local (development) environments only. It reflects:

  • the state of your models (in /models).

  • your Forest Admin customization (in /forest).

This file must be versioned and deployed for any remote environment (staging, production, etc.), as it will be used to generate your Forest UI.

We use the environment variable NODE_ENV to detect if an environment is in development. Setting this variable to either nothing or development will regenerate a new .forestadmin-schema.json file every time your app restarts. Using another value will not regenerate the file.

A consequence of the above is, in Production the .forestadmin-schema.json file does not update according to your schema changes.

Do not edit this file, as it could break your interface if the wrong syntax is used.

Versioning the.forestadmin-schema.json file will also help you visualize your changes:

Version 2.2+ of allows you via its schema:update command to:

Have any models that will always stay hidden? Find out how and gain on performance.

To disable automatic Forest Admin schema updates and do it manually, follow this .

Forest CLI
you can exclude them
Enrich your models
how-to
@forestadmin/agent
forestadmin-agent-django
forestadmin-agent-flask
forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin
forestadmin/symfony-forestadmin