Entities In-Depth

This document will go more in-depth into the possibilities and limitations of Entities.

Base Entity

You cannot name your Entities Base because this name has already been reserved by Dash. It is used for the Ultimate Base Entity. All Entities that you define will inherit from Base.

To show you how the default Base Entity is defined internally by Dash, we will show you it in Dash JSON:

{
    "Model": {
        "Base": {
            "@@Abstract": true,
            "Id": "Int"
        }
    }
}

In the above, we see that:

• all Entities will inherit an Id attribute of the type Int
• the "@@Abstract": true tells Dash NOT to generate code for this Entity.

Overriding the Base Entity

In your Model File, you can override or extend the default Base Entity by providing a new definition:

{
    "Model": {
        "Base": {
            "Id": "Guid",
            "DateCreated": "DateTime"
        }
    }
}

In the above example, we override the Id attribute, and extend the Base Entity with a DateCreated attribute.

Inheritance

By default, every Entity inherits from Base. You can also explicitly specify a custom inheritance by using @@Inherits:

{
    "Model": {
        "MetaData": {
            "@@Abstract": true,
            "Key": "String",
            "Value": "String"
        },

        "PersonMetaData": {
            "@@Inherits": "MetaData"
        }
    }
}