Primitives​

EdgeDB has a robust type system consisting of primitive and object types. Below is a review of EdgeDB’s primitive types; later, these will be used to declare properties on object types.

Scalar types​

Custom scalar types can also be declared. For full documentation, see SDL > Scalar types.

Enums​

To represent an enum, declare a custom scalar that extends the abstract enum type.

scalar type Color extending enum<Red, Green, Blue>;
type Shirt {
  property color -> Color;
}

To reference enum values inside EdgeQL queries, use dot notation, e.g. Color.Green.

For a full reference on enum types, see the Enum docs.

Arrays​

Arrays store zero or more primitive values of the same type in an ordered list. Arrays cannot contain object types or other arrays.

type Person {
  property str_array -> array<str>;
  property json_array -> array<json>;
  # INVALID: arrays of object types not allowed
  # property friends -> array<Person>
  # INVALID: arrays cannot be nested
  # property nested_array -> array<array<str>>
}

For a full reference on array types, see the Array docs.

Tuples​

Like arrays, tuples are ordered sequences of primitive data. Unlike arrays, each element of a tuple can have a distinct type. Tuples elements can be any type, including primitives, objects, arrays, and other tuples.

type Person {
  property unnamed_tuple -> tuple<str, bool, int64>;
  property nested_tuple -> tuple<tuple<str, tuple<bool, int64>>>;
  property tuple_of_arrays -> tuple<array<str>, array<int64>>;
}

Optionally, you can assign a key to each element of the tuple. Tuples containing explicit keys are known as named tuples. You must assign keys to all elements (or none of them).

type BlogPost {
  property metadata -> tuple<title: str, published: bool, upvotes: int64>;
}

Named and unnamed tuples are the same data structure under the hood. You can add, remove, and change keys in a tuple type after it’s been declared. For details, see EdgeQL > Literals > Tuples.

When you query an unnamed tuple using one of EdgeQL’s client libraries, its value is converted to a list/array. When you fetch a named tuple, it is converted into an object/dictionary/hashmap depending on the language.

Sequences​

To represent an auto-incrementing integer property, declare a custom scalar that extends the abstract sequence type. Creating a sequence type initializes a global int64 counter that auto-increments whenever a new object is created. All properties that point to the same sequence type will share the counter.

scalar type ticket_number extending sequence;
type Ticket {
  property number -> ticket_number;
}

Reference the Sequence reference for details.