Check out v4 of the Fauna CLI

v4 of the Fauna CLI is now in beta.

The new version introduces enhancements to the developer experience, including an improved authentication workflow. To get started, check out the CLI v4 quick start.

Collections

You add data to Fauna as JSON-like objects called documents. Documents are stored in collections, which group related data.

Collection types

Fauna has two types of collections:

User-defined collections
System collections

User-defined collections

A user-defined collection stores application data you’ve added to a Fauna database. For example, a database for an e-commerce application may have a Product collection to store product-related data.

A database can have zero or more user-defined collections. A user-defined collection can have any number of documents.

System collections

A system collection stores built-in Fauna resources.

For example, Fauna stores credentials as documents in the Credential system collection. You can use Credential methods to access Credential collection documents in FQL.

System collections include:

Named collections

A named collection is a subset of system collections whose documents are uniquely identified using names instead of document IDs.

Named collections include:

Limitations

You can create and manage system collection documents, but you can’t create, change, or delete a system collection itself.

You can’t change the collection schema of a system collection.

Collection schema

You create and manage user-defined collections as FSL collection schema.

Each user-defined collection has a collection schema. The schema defines the structure and behavior of a collection and its documents.

See Collection schema

`Collection` collection

Fauna stores the schema for user-defined collections as documents in the Collection system collection. You can use the Collection collection’s static methods to access collection schema in FQL.

Reference: Static Collection methods

Create and access collection documents

Collections names act as top-level objects in FQL queries. You can use collection name methods to create and access collection documents.

For example, the following query uses collection.create() to create a document in the Customer collection:

// Creates a `Customer` collection document.
Customer.create({
  name: "John Doe",
  email: "jdoe@example.com",
  address: {
    street: "87856 Mendota Court",
    city: "Washington",
    state: "DC",
    postalCode: "20220",
    country: "US"
  }
})

The query returns the document and includes the document ID:

{
  id: "12345",
  coll: Customer,
  ts: Time("2099-07-10T15:41:49.945Z"),
  cart: null,
  orders: "hdW...",
  name: "John Doe",
  email: "jdoe@example.com",
  address: {
    street: "87856 Mendota Court",
    city: "Washington",
    state: "DC",
    postalCode: "20220",
    country: "US"
  }
}

You can use collection.byId() to get a document by its ID:

// Gets a `Customer` collection document by ID.
Customer.byId("12345")

You can chain document instance methods to a document to update, replace, or delete the document.

For example, the following query uses document.update() to update a document:

// Updates the `Customer` collection document.
Customer.byId("12345")?.update({
  // Updates the existing `name` field value.
  name: "Jonathan Doe"
})

Reference: Collection name methods, document instance methods

Is this article helpful?

Tell Fauna how the article can be improved:
Visit Fauna's forums or email docs@fauna.com

Thank you for your feedback!