Data¶
The power of Skuid lies in the ability to bring together all of your data within a cohesive user experience. To bring that data into your pages, you’ll first connect to that data in the Skuid UI.
There are three key concepts in connecting to data with Skuid:
Data source types (DSTs) are Skuid “helpers” that facilitate the communication between Skuid and a data system. These bundles of code allow Skuid to speak with other systems, and new DSTs generally are included with every major release of Skuid.
Skuid contains several pre-configured data source types, which allow for plug-and-play connections to specific data services. Some of these include Salesforce, Google Drive, and the others listed in this section’s table of contents.
But to allow admins and developers the flexibility of connecting to other services, there are data source types that are not attached to specific products—such as the REST and OData DSTs. While these require additional configuration to use, they facilitate connections to a plethora of services.
Authentication providers are used to authenticate to data systems and are often the first step in connecting to data. They are configured by admins in the Skuid UI to coordinate with—and authenticate to—an external system. Additionally, admins often make adjustments within the external system to properly configure permissions and create the necessary credentials for authentication. For systems produced by the same company—such as Google—it is often sufficient to create one authentication provider for multiple data sources.
Data sources are the individual connections between Skuid and a specific service. They are configured by admins in the Skuid UI and depend on both of the above concepts. Skuid data sources use data source types to speak a service’s language and authentication providers to authenticate to a service.
Once you’ve created your data sources, you can implement as many as you want in each Skuid page through Skuid models; you can mix and match data from Salesforce orgs, REST data sources, and various other sources all in one page.
Any headers or parameters that should be sent with every request (such as API keys and/or authentication) are configured on the data source.
Note
Be conscious of whether the page you’re working with is added to the app it will be deployed within. Using a page within a deployed app’s pages without first adding it to the app could result in unexpected behaviors. See the Apps topic for more information.