Creating and Managing Fields

Each data type might have one or more fields. You should add at least one field when creating a data type. The number and types of the fields you can add depend on your purposes.

For example, if you have a form on a web page where the user enters his personal data, you might have text fields for her or his first and last names, email address and phone number, a large text field (text area) for her or his address, and a date field for her or his date of birth.

When you add a field to a data type, you work with its settings editor in the working area. Each field has its basic and advanced properties grouped each on its corresponding tab in the settings editor.

You should set most of the basic properties manually while the advanced properties are set automatically for you with default values. However, if you want to fine-tune a field, you will probably set the advanced properties manually, too. For example, you can select another widget for the field.

Each field you add should be of a certain type. The type determines what kind of data the field can hold. Based on the field type, some of the field’s properties may differ. For example, for a string type you should specify the string’s maximum length, for a decimal type – the number of decimal places, and for a data reference – its reference type.

The field type also determines what kind of a widget will be used for this field on the form. For example, with a string field intended for short texts, a text box widget will be most likely used, while the date field will use a date selector widget.

(When creating global data types and page data folders, you can manage the name and the type of the key field named “Id” by default. Please see “Managing key fields” for more information.)

Let’s first find out what basic and advanced properties you can set when adding a field to a data type with a closer look at field types.

Basic Field Properties

When you add a field, you should set a number of its basic properties such as its name, label, help text, position and type as well as indicate whether this field is required or optional.

^{Figure 11: Basic Field Properties}

The following is the list of these basic properties:

Based on the field type, you might need to set an additional property specific to this type (e.g. String maximum length). These additional properties are discussed in the following section dedicated to the field types.

Field Types

For each global data type, C1 CMS allows you to create fields of the following types:

• String
• XHTML
• Integer
• Decimal number
• Date
• Boolean
• Unique Identifier (GUID)
• Data reference

When you select the string, decimal number or data reference for the field type, you might also set an additional property specific to this type.

Normally, C1 CMS sets this property to a default value but you can select a different value for it, too.

For the String type, you can also specify the string’s maximum length. You can select 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 and 1024 characters for the maximum or set the string to the unlimited length. By default, the value is set to 64.

^{Figure 12: Additional property for the String field}

For the Decimal number type, you can also set up the number of decimal places. You can choose 1, 2, 3 or 4. The default value is set to 2.

^{Figure 13: Additional property for the Decimal number field}

For the Data references, you should select the reference type, that is, what entity you want to reference in this field. This will result in a special field that will serve as a list of these entities.

^{Figure 14: Additional property for the Data reference field}

The data references can be of the following types:

By default, the reference type is set to C1 Image.

In addition to these predefined reference types, if you have global data types, you can also select them for the reference type. In this case, the data items of this data type will be listed as entities in the field of this type.

Advanced Field Properties

A number of advanced properties allow you to fine-tune the field you add to a data type.

^{Figure 15: Advanced field properties}

Every time you add another field, its advanced properties are set to defaults automatically. You can choose to override these default values.