Generating MOLGENIS from scratch

We will generate a new MOLGENIS by the example of a simple Address Book application:

a simple database having “Contacts” entities that each can have zero or more “Addresses”:

1. Create the data model XML

Create a new xml file ‘addressbook_db.xml’ in the root of you application. This file will contain the MOLGENIS model. Use the following template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE molgenis PUBLIC "MOLGENIS 1.0" "http://molgenis.sourceforge.net/dtd/molgenis_v_1_0.dtd">
<molgenis name="addressbook">

</molgenis>

2. Add a “Contact” data type.

<molgenis name="addressbook">
  <entity name="Contact">
                
  </entity>
</molgenis>

3. Add properties to the “Contact” data type.

• A unique, automatic numeric identifier field that MOLGENIS will use to refer contacts.

  <field name="contact_id" type="autoid"/>
  

• A required and unique string field ‘displayname’ to have a unique label to find Contacts by. Note that if you provide no ‘type’ then type=”string” is implied.

  <field name="displayname" unique="true"/>
  

• Optional (‘nillable’) string fields for firstname, lastname and midinitials:

  <field name="firstname" nillable="true"/>
  <field name="midinitials" nillable="true"/>
  <field name="lastname" nillable="true"/>
  

• An optional field of type date for birthday:

  <field name="birthday" type="date" nillable="true"/>