Budibase DB

Budibase DB is our native datasource. Any data you add here is stored directly on your Budibase instance.

Creating a table

You can create a table when you are in the Data section of the application builder.

Click Add source and then click the Create new table button.

Adding columns

To add new columns to an existing Budibase DB table, navigate to the table you want to edit, then click the + button along the top-right of the grid view. This will display a popover where you can configure the column you want to add.

Editing columns

1. Step into the table through the sidebar
2. Hover over the column name you want to edit
3. Click the three dots and select Edit column

Selecting the display column

The display column is an important aspect when you're setting up relationships in tables. The column you select as a display column will be the one visually displayed inside a relationship column in another table.

Selecting a column during the table creation is only possible if you import data using a CSV file. To select a display column in any other situation, you can set it from the edit column dropdown.

Auto-columns

After creating a new Budibase DB table you can add any number of built-in (auto types) columns you want to have. Each of these will be automatically updated whenever rows are added or updated in your table.

When adding a column, select Auto Column, and then the specific sub-type.

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Create table from CSV

You can Import a CSV/JSON file as a new Budibase table.

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Data types

Within Budibase DB there are several data types to choose.

If using an external SQL Datasource, the native SQL data types will be mapped to one of these Budibase types for use in your apps. For more detail, look here for how the mappings are handled.

Column definitions

Common column options:

Data type specific column options:

Constraints

The following column constraints are available:

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External datasource constraints

You can add Budibase constraints to external table columns, however this is entirely for form validation and will not restrict the data that is saved.
Instead, you must add data constraints yourself to any external table schemas.

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Data sync between environments

When using the Budibase DB, there are two environments to consider.

The Development environment represents the data that you see and interact with when using the app builder, which includes the Data and Design sections, and the App preview.

If in doubt, you can see if you are in the dev environment from the URL, which will show /app/app_dev_abc... in the path. In production, the URL will appear without the _dev part.

Production represents your live environment. This is the data that your End Users will interact with. When in the app builder, production data will continuously sync and update your development data, although a page refresh may be needed to see the new changes.

Whenever you Publish your app, any edits, inserts or deletes made in your dev data will be pushed into production, which may overwrite existing data.

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External datasources

Things are a little different when using an external database such as SQL.
In this case the data in either environment will read and write to the database that you connected to.

You can use Environment variables 🔒 to make use of development and production databases.