Express Basics

Express is a No-Code/Low-Code way to create relational data models. If you've grown to see the power of custom attributes in making pages, users, files and calendar events unique, you may come to think: "why limit it to just those core data types, why can't I make my own datatypes with custom attributes?" Welcome to Express.

What's Express For?

Express is really good for quickly building data models with relations for an idea that is maturing as you go. If you can show value with a database that has a few thousand records, and you want to be able to move quickly, Express can help you do that. 

Every time you make a form in Concrete, you're making an Express object behind the scenes. That might help you find natural ways to expand your site over time. Maybe you start with some data collection from your audience, but then you find you'd like to extend and join those results to other information so you can build processes around the information. Express is for you. 

What's Express NOT For?

Express is going to get slow if you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of records in it. If you're building an application and you have very clear object definitions that won't change over time, you'd be better served by having a developer make custom Doctrine objects with the tables that come with them.

Dashboard > Express

Much of the configuration around Express objects happens in Dashboard > System & Settings > Express. The interface you may be looking at from Dashboard > Express is just the actual data stored in these express objects. The actual data stored in Express objects will be listed here. You can search, view details and even export to CSV from here.