Database plugin

The database plugin is installed by default in every copy of Baserow. Without it you can’t really do anything with the application. In short this is the plugin that allows creating a database with a spreadsheet-like interface. You will notice that everything has been built around this concept.

Tables

Each database application can have multiple tables and a table is exactly what you might suspect. It contains rows and columns, but in Baserow the columns are called fields. Every table has its own schema representation in the PostgreSQL database.

There is a baserow.contrib.database.table.handler.TableHandler handler class that has all kinds of methods related to creating, modifying, and deleting tables. Another nice thing is that a Django model of the table can easily be generated. Let’s say you have the following table with id id and you want select all the data.

Model name Brand Price
3 Series BTW 30000
A4 Audi 25000
Model 3 Tesla 50000 
from baserow.contrib.database.table.models import Table

cars_table = Table.objects.get(pk=ID_REFERENCED_TABLE_ABOVE)
# If you set the attribute_names to True the attribute name is going to be the field 
# name provided by the user instead of field_{id}
cars_model = cars_table.get_model(attribute_names=True)

for car in cars_model.objects.all():
    print(car.id, car.model_name, car.price)

# Results in:
# 1 3 series 30000
# 2 A4 30000
# 2 Model 3 30000

Fields

A field is actually a column definition of a table. It accepts only a certain data type for its cell values. A field can, for example, be a number field that accepts two placements after the comma. If a new field is added to a table it is also added as column to the table representation in the database. The column name in the database will be field_{id}. The fields can be created, modified and deleted via the baserow.contrib.database.fields.handler.FieldHandler and via the REST API. Several field types have been included by default.

Field types can be added via plugins. More about that on the field type plugin page.

  • text: Single line text.
  • long_text: Multi line text.
  • number: A number that can optionally be negative and optionally be a decimal.
  • boolean: Just holds true or false.
  • date: A date field in EU, ISO or USA format that can optionally include time am/pm format.

Views

Views define how the table data is displayed to the user. By default the grid view type is included, which displays the data in a spreadsheet-like interface. Multiple views can be added to each table and each view has its own settings. If you, for example, have two grid views, A and B, of the same table of data, and you change the width of a column in grid A, then it only changes for grid A and not for grid B. The views can be created, modified and deleted via the baserow.contrib.database.views.handler.ViewHandler and via the REST API.

View types can be added via plugins. More about that on the view type plugin page.

Rows

Rows are the table data. The values that are accepted depend on the fields of the table. The data is stored in the representation table in the database. In the example below we will insert a single row of data in a table we have just created via the python shell. The same result could be achieved via the REST API.

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model 
from baserow.contrib.database.table.models import Table
from baserow.contrib.database.fields.handler import FieldHandler
from baserow.contrib.database.rows.handler import RowHandler

User = get_user_model()
user = User.objects.get(pk=1)
table = Table.objects.get(pk=10)

name = FieldHandler().create_field(user, table, 'text', name='Name')
price = FieldHandler().create_field(user, table, 'number', name='Price')
row = RowHandler().create_row(user, table, {
    f'field_{name.id}': 'Smartphone',
    f'field_{price.id}': 300
})

model = table.get_model()
rows = model.objects.all()

print(rows[0].name)
print(rows[0].price)

# Which will result in:
# Smartphone
# 300
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