Aliasing data models¶

The Glaze DataModel library provides human-readable name aliasing for data models, making it easier to refer to and use data models with the DID DataStore API, and other places within your Ceramic application.

How it works¶

The Glaze DataModel library requires an instance of Ceramic and a preexisting aliases object, which can be created during development using either the Glaze CLI or the Glaze DevTools library.

The primary purpose of the DataModel library is to create a new ModelAliases object which contains human-friendly aliases for your data models that can be used at runtime to simplify development. This ModelAliases is defined by the following type:

type ModelAliases = {
  schemas: Record<string, string>
  definitions: Record<string, string>
  tiles: Record<string, string>
}

In this object, the key of each record is your alias and the value is a reference to a stream, which for schemas is a commitURL and for definitions and other related tiles is a streamID.

Getting started with Glaze DataModel¶

Visit the Glaze DataModel reference → documentation for full instructions on how to install, configure, and use the module in your application. For convenience, here's a look at what's possible with the Glaze DataModel:

Installation¶

npm install @glazed/datamodel

Usage¶

After you have a ModelAliases object from the Glaze CLI or the DevTools library, the main purpose of the Glaze DataModel library is to abstract away the underlying machine-readable names of your schemas and data model definitions into something human-readable that simplifies application development:

import { DataModel } from '@glazed/datamodel'

const aliases = {
  schemas: {
    MySchema: 'ceramic://mySchemaURL',
  },
  definitions: {
    myDefinition: 'myDefinitionID',
  },
  tiles: {},
}

const model = new DataModel({ ceramic, aliases })

model.getSchemaURL('MySchema') // 'ceramic://mySchemaURL'

Next steps: Storing and retrieving data¶

Your human-readable data model aliases can now be used with the DID DataStore module provided by Glaze suite, which is also included in the Self.ID SDK, to store and retrieve data from these data models.