Entities

Entities are the core building blocks of Entu. An entity is a record — a person, a project, an invoice, a product — any object you need to manage. Every entity belongs to an entity type that acts as a blueprint for what kind of data it holds.

To define your data model in the UI, see Entity Types.

Key Characteristics

Flexible properties — Unlike a relational table with fixed columns, entities carry any set of properties defined by their type. Different entity types can model entirely different shapes of data in the same system.

Multi-valued properties — A single property name can hold multiple values. An entity can have several tags, phone numbers, or file attachments all stored under the same property name.

Hierarchical structure — Entities can have parent–child relationships. A child entity can have multiple parents, meaning it appears in several contexts simultaneously without being duplicated.

References — Entities can reference other entities via reference properties, creating a connected graph of data.

Computed properties — Properties can be defined as formulas that recalculate automatically on every save, based on the entity's own data, its children, or entities that reference it. See Formulas.

Audit trail — All property values carry creation metadata (timestamp and user), making it traceable who set what and when.

Hierarchy and Relationships

Entities are organised into hierarchies using the _parent system property.

Multiple parents — An entity can have more than one parent and appears as a child in each context without being duplicated. A document can belong to both a project and a department simultaneously.

Creating children — When you use the "Add" button on a parent entity's page, _parent is set automatically. You need _expander or _owner rights on the parent to create children.

Rights inheritance — When _inheritrights: true is set on a child entity, it inherits the access rights from its parent. Changes at the parent level cascade down to all children with inheritance enabled.

TIP

The recommended pattern is to grant rights on a parent container and enable _inheritrights on children — this way you manage access in one place instead of on every entity individually.

Access Rights

Every entity has explicit access control. Rights are set by referencing a person entity under the appropriate rights property. A person has access if they match any entry in any rights property.

Property	Access level
_owner	Full control — view, edit all properties, delete the entity, manage rights, create children.
_editor	Can view and edit all properties except the rights properties themselves.
_expander	Can view the entity and create child entities under it.
_viewer	Read-only — can view the entity and its properties.
_noaccess	Explicitly denied all access. Overrides any inherited rights.

Sharing

The _sharing property controls visibility beyond individual user rights:

Value	Who can view
private	Only users with explicit rights. This is the default.
domain	All authenticated users in the database, regardless of explicit rights.
public	Anyone, including unauthenticated visitors.

Editing always requires _editor or _owner rights regardless of sharing level.

INFO

domain and public sharing only grants read access. Write access always requires explicit _editor or _owner rights on the entity.

DANGER

Setting _sharing: public makes the entity visible to anyone on the internet without authentication. Only use it for intentionally public content.

Rights Inheritance

Set _inheritrights: true on an entity to inherit rights from its parent. Rights defined directly on the child override inherited ones. Use _noaccess to block a user who would otherwise inherit access from a parent.

INFO

Right evaluation order: explicit rights on the entity → inherited rights from parent → _sharing level. _noaccess always wins.