Entities & Properties¶

Entities and properties are the building blocks of your application's data model. An entity maps to a database table, and properties map to columns.

Entities¶

An entity represents a conceptual object in your application — for example Products, Orders, or Invoices. When you create an entity, Apilane creates the underlying database table and automatically adds system properties.

System Entities¶

Every application is created with the following system entities:

Entity	Purpose
Users	Stores application user accounts (email, username, password, roles, etc.)
Files	Stores file metadata (name, size, UID, public flag). Managed via the Files endpoints.

System entities cannot be deleted. You can add custom properties to them just like any other entity.

Change Tracking¶

Each entity can optionally have change tracking enabled. When enabled, Apilane stores a historical snapshot of every record before it is updated or deleted. This allows you to:

View the full history of changes for any record
Audit who changed what and when
Retrieve previous versions of a record

Change tracking data can be accessed via the GetHistoryByID endpoint.

Storage consideration

Change tracking increases storage usage since every update creates a history entry. Enable it only on entities where auditing is required.

Properties¶

A property is a specific piece of data within an entity — like Name, Price, or IsActive. Each property has a type and optional validation rules.

Property Types¶

Type	Description	Database mapping	Example values
String	Text data	`NVARCHAR` / `TEXT`	`"hello"`, `"john@example.com"`
Number	Numeric data (integers and decimals)	`BIGINT` / `FLOAT`	`42`, `3.14`, `-100`
Boolean	True/false values	`BIT` / `TINYINT`	`true`, `false`
Date	Date and time values	`DATETIME` / `TIMESTAMP`	`"2025-01-15 10:30:00.000"`

System Properties¶

Every entity automatically includes these system properties:

Property	Type	Description
ID	Number	Auto-incrementing primary key
Owner	Number	The user ID that created the record
Created	Number	Unix timestamp (milliseconds) when the record was created

These properties are managed by Apilane and cannot be modified directly by application users.

Property Validation¶

Each property supports the following validation options:

Option	Applies to	Description
Required	All types	The property must have a value when creating a record
Unique	All types	No two records can have the same value
Minimum	String, Number	Minimum length (String) or minimum value (Number)
Maximum	String, Number	Maximum length (String) or maximum value (Number)
Decimal Places	Number	Number of decimal places to store
Validation Regex	String	A regular expression pattern the value must match
Encrypted	String	The value is encrypted at rest in the database

Encrypted properties

Encrypted properties cannot be used in filters or sorting since the stored value is encrypted. Use encryption only for sensitive data like personal identifiers.

Constraints¶

Constraints enforce data integrity rules between entities.

Unique Constraint¶

Ensures that no two records in an entity share the same value for a given property. This is configured per-property via the Unique validation option.

Foreign Key Constraint¶

Links a property to the ID column of another entity, enforcing referential integrity. When creating a foreign key, you choose the delete behavior:

Behavior	Description
No Action	Prevents deleting a parent record if child records reference it
Set Null	Sets the foreign key property to `null` when the parent record is deleted
Cascade	Automatically deletes child records when the parent record is deleted

Example

If you have an Orders entity with a property CustomerID that is a foreign key to Users.ID with Cascade behavior — deleting a user automatically deletes all their orders.

Differentiation Entity¶

A differentiation entity is a special system feature that partitions data across your application. See Application > Differentiation Entity for details.