adding-and-removing.md

title	date	type	weight	description	tags
Adding, editing and removing	2020-04-24 16:40:00 +0100	docs	40	The basics of working with tables	Architect

A table is a store of data of a particular type e.g. a company, contact, product or invoice. Tables are the fundamental building blocks of an agileBase application.

Adding a table

1. On the homepage, click the 'toggle' button in the top-right of the screen to enable dev mode (if it is not enabled already)
2. Click + Add Table, choosing a name for the new table

TODO: images

You can change the table's name and add a longer description under Help. This description will be used as help text in the user interface.

Naming tables

When naming a table, it's best to use a plural form. Also avoid filler endings like 'info' or 'details'. So rather than 'company info', you might call a table 'companies'.

The reason for this is that the user interface will automatically convert plural names into singular forms where appropriate. So for example if there's a plus button on the screen to allow the user to add a new record in the table, it will automatically recognise the table and title the button Add Company.

If you build a large system with lots of tables, you may find it a good idea to prefix table names using a numbering/lettering system e.g. a) table 1 b) table 2

In the administrator interface, tables are listed alphabetically, so you can arrange the tables into a logical order with this method.

The user interface will strip out any prefixes when displaying names to users, if they end with a closing bracket ).

Editing a table

There are two ways to edit a table: from the homepage, or from editing a record.

From the homepage

When you toggle build mode with the toggle in the top right corner of the screen, you can see a connections mode and a list mode: these two views show the tables in the system. The connections mode shows the relations between entities whilst the list mode presents the same data in tabular form.

From editing a record

When build mode is enabled, if you are viewing an individual record then clicking the big pencil at the top left of the screen lets you edit the underlying table.

Removing a table

Before removing a table, you first need to remove all views and [fields]({{<relref "/docs/fields/#removing-a-field">}}).

It's not necessary to remove actual data records from the table first.

A list of existing views is visible in the name and views section of the panel sidebar. Visit each view and delete it.

Then below to the table's name and views section is the fields section. Delete all the existing fields from here.

When you're done, you can click the Remove table button in name and views.

When deleting views and fields, you may find you have to first delete other views or fields they depend on. In complex systems there can be chains of objects that need to be deleted in order.

Deleting is a destructive process so is not highly automated on purpose, to avoid accidental deletion. However at each stage you'll be shown any dependencies which have to be removed first, so you can follow through the chain.