Clarification on Triple @@@ Notation in Field Paths Instead of Dot Notation

Help me!
1

Hi Support Team,

I am currently migrating my project to Forest Admin Agent, and I encountered an unexpected behavior regarding how nested fields are represented. Specifically, I noticed that nested fields in my schema appear with triple @@@ instead of the standard dot . notation.

For example, in my MongoDB schema, I have the following structure:

const UserSchema = new Schema({
  username: String,
  email: String,
  address: {
    street: String,
    city: String,
  },
});

However, when I try to reference address.city in Forest Admin, I receive the following error message:

Error during Forest Admin initialization: MissingFieldError: The 'users.address.city' field was not found. Available fields are: [_id, username, email, createdAt, updatedAt, address@@@street, address@@@city, metadata]. Please check if the field name is correct.

From this, it appears that Forest Admin represents address.city as address@@@city instead of address.city.

I attempted to create a smart field using dot notation, but it resulted in an error:

collection.addField("cityName", {
  columnType: "String",
  dependencies: ["address.city"],  // Using dot notation
  getValues: (records) => records.map((record) => record["address.city"] || null),
});

Since address.city is not recognized, I assume that dependencies: ["address@@@city"] would be required instead.

I reviewed the Forest Admin documentation, but I couldn’t find any explanation for this @@@ notation.

Could you please clarify:

  1. Is the use of triple @@@ in place of dot notation the expected behavior for nested fields in MongoDB?
  2. If so, is there an official reference explaining this in the documentation?
  3. Is there a way to configure Forest Admin to use dot notation instead?

Looking forward to your response.

2

Hi @ilyas,

Could you let me know where you saw those fields suggested ? This are technical names that are used only privately, that’s why it’s not documented :sweat_smile:

3

when i run my forest admin i get this error

Error during Forest Admin initialization: MissingFieldError: The 'users.address.city' field was not found. Available fields are: [_id, username, email, createdAt, updatedAt, address@@@street, address@@@city, metadata]. Please check if the field name is correct.

in it you can see that it mentions the triple @ in the “Available fields” when i use the tripple @ it works when i use the . it doesn’t

4

Hello,

There is no documentation on this section because, if you are using TypeScript, the autocompletion provides the available fields with the correct syntax.

You should use : as a separator:

collection.addField("cityName", {
  columnType: "String",
  dependencies: ["address:city"],  // Using colon notation
  getValues: (records) => records.map((record) => record["address.city"] || null),
});

However, there is a bug in the error message, as "@@@" is a private syntax and should be replaced with ":".

Are you using the last agent version? Please if it’s not the case, could you update it to the latest please :pray:

5

i updated to the latest agent version


"@forestadmin/agent": "^1.59.2",
"@forestadmin/datasource-mongoose": "^1.8.9",
"@forestadmin/datasource-toolkit": "^1.48.0",

for this address:city it worked but for example if the schema is like this :

const UserSchema = new Schema({
  username: String,
  email: String,
  cityId:{
      type: String,
      ref: "city",
   }
});

const CitySchema = new Schema({
  name: String,
  details:{
      zipcode: String,
      someDetail: String,
   }
});

and i update the dependency to this :

userCollection.addField("cityName", {
  columnType: "String",
  dependencies: ["cityId__manyToOne:details:zipcode"],  // I get a suggestion to use cityId__manyToOne
  getValues: (records) => records.map((record) => record["address.city"] || null),
});

i get the same error

Error during Forest Admin initialization: MissingFieldError:

this time it’s suggesting to use

cityId__manyToOne:details@@@zipcode

inside .forestadmin-schema.json file :
image

7

Hello,
Sorry for the late response, I was a little bit busy.

Indeed, there are inconsistencies in the path naming. I can reproduce your bug but in your case the right syntaxe is cityId__manyToOne:details@@@zipcode. I will create a bug ticket to fix this the inconsistencies.
Do you use Typescript because it could be helpful to you to use the right syntax?

image
image656Ă—221 42.3 KB

8

After some investigations, I was wrong.
The behavior is not buggy.

The separator “@@@” is used when it’s a nested field.
The “:” is used to retrieve the related data.

For example:

myRelation:myField@@@myNestedField

I’m asking to document the behavior.

:pray:

9

So this is normal behavior, ok thank you

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