api/docs/content/doc/practical-instructions/database.md

date	title	draft	type	menu
2019-02-12:00:00+02:00	Database	false	doc	sidebar parent practical instructions

Database

Vikunja uses xorm as an abstraction layer to handle the database connection. Please refer to their documentation on how to exactly use it.

Inside the models package, a variable x is available which contains a pointer to an instance of xorm.Engine. This is used whenever you make a call to the database to get or update data.

This xorm instance is set up and initialized every time vikunja is started.

Adding new database tables

To add a new table to the database, add a an instance of your struct to the tables variable in the init function in pkg/models/models.go. Xorm will sync them automatically.

You also need to add a pointer to the tablesWithPointer slice to enable caching for all instances of this struct.

To learn more about how to configure your struct to create "good" tables, refer to the xorm documentaion.

Adding data to test fixtures

Adding data for test fixtures is done in via yaml files insinde of pkg/models/fixtures.

The name of the yaml file should equal the table name in the database. Adding values to it is done via array definition inside of the yaml file.

Note: Table and column names need to be in snake_case as that's what is used internally in the database and for mapping values from the database to xorm so your structs can use it.