Dynamic Schemas

[philippguertler]

⚠️ This document is still WIP! ⚠️

Dynamic Schemas

A weakness in Gentics Mesh is the adaption to changes in a project. This is apparent in early stages by creating and frequently updating schemas during development. In later stages of the project, the customer might want a change in their project, which often requires a schema migration, updating every node of the schema in the process. To alleviate the pains in these cases, I propose the introduction of dynamic schemas in Gentics Mesh.

Example Usage

POST /demo/nodes

{
  "schema": "$dynamic",
  "parentUuid": "558c145de32843bc9831b87e5d1f7534",
  "language": "en",
  "fields": {
    "name": "StartPage",
    "title": "Hello World!"
  }
}

This creates a node with the dynamic schema. You do not need to create a schema before creating the node. After that you can update the node like usual:

POST /demo/nodes/ca6c7df3f45b48d4ac7df3f45ba8d42f

{
  "language": "en",
  "fields": {
    "name": "StartPage",
    "title": "Hello World!",
    "content": "Welcome to my site!"
  }
}

As you can see, a new field has been added to the node without changing the schema.

You can use any structure you like:

POST /demo/nodes/ca6c7df3f45b48d4ac7df3f45ba8d42f

{
  "language": "en",
  "fields": {
    "name": "StartPage",
    "title": "Hello World!",
    "content": "Welcome to my site!",
    "footer": {
      "editors": [
        "John Doe",
        "Jane Doe"
      ],
      "text": "Powered by Gentics Mesh"
    }
  }
}

This is the core usage of the dynamic schema and allows for more convenient development and adaptation to changes. However, this concept raises a lot of questions regarding existing features of Gentics Mesh.

Pros & Cons

Existing Features

Containers

Webroot

Elasticsearch

GraphQL

Binaries

Micronodes / Microschemas