The Table View

The Table View is the gateway to your data. It shows records as rows and their fields as columns.

Search

To search in Forest, use the search bar at the top of the page (1):

Your search terms are highlighted within the matching results (2).

Only regular fields are searched on. All reference fields of belongsTo records are ignored, unless you are using an extended search.

Extended search

Lets search for "Lowe":

We get no result!

The extended search lets you search also within reference fields of belongsTo records.

Extended search is not the default search because it is slower.

Advanced search syntax

Advanced search syntax is only supported on nodejs agents @forestadmin/agent starting from version 1.36.18.

Search supports advanced syntax to help you find exactly what you are looking for:

• -term will search for records that do not contain term ;

• property:term will search for records that contain term in the property field ;

• relation.childProperty:term will search for records that contain term in the childProperty field of the relation relation ;

• term1 OR term2 will search for records that contain term1 or term2 ;

• term1 AND term2 will search for records that contain term1 and term2 (equivalent to term1 term2);

• term1 AND (term2 OR term3) will search for records that contain term1 and either term2 or term3.

• property:NULL will explicitly search for records that contain the technical value NULL in the property field ;

• "multiple quoted words" will search for records that contain the phrase multiple quoted words without splitting it into multiple terms ;

All elements of the advanced syntax can be combined, for instance (property:term OR -term2) AND (property1:NULL OR relation.childProperty:term3).

Please note that NULL, OR and AND need to be written in capital letters to be interpreted as operators.

Focused search on one property

The following syntax allows to search a specific term only on a given property in a database:

• property:searchedTerm will search the term "searchedTerm" in the field named property ;

• relation.childProperty:searchedTerm will search the term "searchedTerm" in the field childProperty inside the relation named relation.

The property name needs to match the technical one in the database. Forest Admin will ignore casing and separator characters such as - and _ when searching for fields. For instance property_name will match an technical property named propertyName.

Focused search can be combined with other syntax, such as property:>20 to search for a value greater than 20.

Search on text fields

Searching on text fields is done differently, depending on the different operators supported by your database. We select the right operator in this order of priority:

1. Contains (case insensitive)

2. Contains (case sensitive)

3. Equal

It means that, in a database that supports the first operator, searching the term Term will return all records containing the text term even if the case does not match. For instance:

• TERM will match

• abcTERMdef will also match

Searching on numbers

Number fields support the following additional syntax:

• >42 will search for records that contain a number greater than 42 ;

• >=42 will search for records that contain a number greater than or equal to 42 ;

• <42 will search for records that contain a number lower than 42 ;

• <=42 will search for records that contain a number lower than or equal to 42.

This syntax can be used in combination with property names, for instance property:>42 will search for records that contain a number greater than 42 in the property field.

Searching on dates

Date fields support the following additional syntax:

• 2020 will search for records that contain a date in the year 2020 ;

• 2020-01 will search for records that contain a date in January 2020 ;

• 2020-01-01 will search for records that contain a date on January 1st 2020 ;

Operators >, >=, <, <= can be used in combination with dates, for instance

• property:>2020-01-01 will search for records that contain a date after January 1st 2020 in the property field ;

• property:<=2020 will search for records that contain a date in 2020 or before in the property field.

Dates will be considered expressed in the timezone configured in Forest Admin.

Searching on booleans

Boolean values support the following additional syntax:

• true or 1 will search for records that contain true ;

• false or 0 will search for records that contain false ;

True and false values are case insensitive, meaning that True and False will also work for instance.

Filters

Searching is just one way to be faster at finding the desired data. Forest Admin also allows you to use filters to sort your data.

Sort your data

By clicking on a column’s header (1), you will sort the data by descending then ascending order, depending on the type of data in this field. An arrow (2) will appear in the header, showing you that this column is sorted.

Add one or several filters

You can filter your list of records by clicking at the very end of the search bar on ‘Filter’ (1). Or you can also click on the filter icon in column headers as a shortcut to pre-fill the property you wish to filter on (2).

If you notice there is no filter (3): either you have disabled filtering on this field, or it is a Smart Field that does not support filters.

Once opened, the filter management dropdown will look like this:

The list of filtering options available depends on the nature of the selected field.

To change the logic between conditions, simply click to toggle between AND and OR.

Click Apply filters for them to be taken into account.

Once applied, you can save filters as segments (learn more about segments).

Filtering on related data is available from version 7.3.0 (4.0.0 for Rails).

Understanding filters

Most filters are quite straight-forward. Some, however, require a little more explanation:

Date filters

There are many date filters which should let you filter exactly on the time period of your choice, but it can get a little confusing. We've added a tooltip which tells you what the directly within the dropdown:

Just hover a date filter to see how it would apply right now.

"is blank" vs "is present" (Mongodb only)

In NoSQL orms, there is a difference between:

Sample A

{ color: "red", size: "" }

and

Sample B

{ color: "red" }

Now imagine a third sample:

Sample C

{ color: "blue", size: "M" }

Then the following filter conditions will yield the following results:

Condition(s)	Result(s)
size is blank	A and B
size is present	A and C
size is present and size is blank	A

Select

The Table View does not only display your data. It also allows you to interact with it:

Forest Admin provides basic CRUD actions out of the box. Check out how you can duplicate and delete from the Table View, but also create and update from dedicated views.

Select all records vs Select current page only

On all Table Views, you'll notice a down caret (▾) next to the top-left header checkbox. Clicking on it lets you choose between selecting all records of the collection or selection only records from the current page:

Selecting all records has no consequence, however applying an action to all those records might. That's why we've added a warning when you select all records (1):

Having selected all records, you can deselect records from this page only: moving to any another page will deselect all records.

Otherwise, you can select records from current page only (2) which will select only visible records:

Pagination

Navigating the Forest Admin interface is pretty straightforward, and it won’t come as a surprise that our pagination is equally straightforward.

Browse several pages

Very large collections can’t be displayed on a single page. Where this is the case, you will be able to check the number of records in the collection at the bottom right side of the Table View (1). At the bottom in the middle, you will be able to browse through the different pages of the collection (2).