The Typesync schema for a project is defined in a collection of YAML/JSON files. Your definition can contain as many model definition files as you need and you can organize them any way you want.

Each top-level field in a definition file must refer to a model name and the corresponding value must be the model definition. There are two types of models that you can define in a model definition file: document models and alias models.

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Document models

A document model represents the shape of a document in a particular Firestore collection.

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model
"document"
required

A literal field that specifies that this is a document model.

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path
string
required

An exact or generic path to the document. Must be a string consisting of path segments separated by a / (slash). Each segment can either be a literal ID or a generic ID of the collection or document. A literal ID is a plain string, such as users, while a generic ID must be enclosed in curly braces (e.g. {userId}).

Example values:

  • projects/{projectId}: A document in a top-level projects collection.
  • users/{userId}/posts/{postId}: A document in a posts sub-collection.
  • static/data/authors/{authorId}: A document in a static authors sub-collection.
  • {rootColId}/{docId}/cities/london: A document with a specific ID in a cities sub-collection.
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docs
string

Optional documentation explaining the model in more detail. Typesync will add this to the doc comments for the generated models.

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type
hash
required

The type representing the shape of the document. A document can be represented only by an object type.

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Example

user.yml
# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://schema.typesync.org/v0.13.json

User:
  model: document
  path: users/{userId}
  docs: Represents a user that belongs to a project.
  type:
    type: object
    fields:
      name:
        type: string
        docs: The full name of the user.
      created_at:
        type: timestamp

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Alias models

An alias model is used for convenience purposes to define reusable type aliases. You can use the same alias model in multiple document models. You can also use alias models when composing other aliases.

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model
"alias"
required

A literal field that specifies that this is an alias model.

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docs
string

Optional documentation explaining the model in more detail. Typesync will add this to the doc comments for the generated models.

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type
string | hash
required

The type of which this model is an alias. Can be any Typesync type.

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Example

user.yml
# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://schema.typesync.org/v0.13.json

UserRole:
  model: alias
  docs: Represents a user's role within a project.
  type:
    type: enum
    members:
      - label: Owner
        value: owner
      - label: Admin
        value: admin
      - label: Member
        value: member

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Autcomplete/Intellisense

When writing your schema definition in YAML, always include the following line at the top of each definition file.

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://schema.typesync.org/v0.13.json

This indicates to your IDE that the file is not just any YAML file but a part of a Typesync definition by linking it to the relevant JSON Schema.. This will allow your IDE to provide Intellisense/autocomplete for definition fields.

For type hinting to take effect, you may need to install a YAML extension that automatically loads the specified JSON Schema. For VS Code, we recommend using the YAML extension by Red Hat.

For the time being, you need manually synchronize the schema version in this line with the Typesync version you’re using. For example, if you’re using Typesync version 0.4.2, you need to make sure that the version in the above schema URL is v0.4. Patch version is always excluded.

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Validating with CLI

While utilizing a JSON schema can help identify syntax errors within your schema definition, the Typesync CLI provides the most reliable method to check if a definition is syntactically valid. To validate a schema definition, use the validate command as shown below:

typesync validate --definition <pathToDefinition>

For additional details on using this command, see validate.

Typesync automatically validates your definition before running any generators. The manual validation command is needed when you just want to check if your schema definition is valid without generating any artifacts.