Velo: Working with Wix App Collections and Code

This article explains what Wix App collections are and how you can work with them.

Wix App collections are special collections that come from the Wix Apps that you add to your site. These collections appear automatically in your Content Management System (CMS) when you have Wix Data enabled on your site.

Each app will have different collections. For example, if you have the Wix Billing app on your site, you will see Billing collections such as Invoices and PriceQuotes  grouped together in a section called "Billing." If your site has the Wix Bookings app, you will see Bookings collections such as Schedule,  Services and Staff listed in a section called "Bookings." 

Click a collection to open it.

Some Wix App collections are called Starter collections. When the Wix App is added, you get a form template and an empty collection that you can use and modify. 

Unlike regular Wix App collections:

• Form fields are connected dynamically to fields in the starter collection.
• You can customize starter collections by adding fields, renaming, and more. 

For example, the Wix Forms app gives you a starter collection depending on the form you choose. If you choose a Contest form, an Enter Contest collection is created for you with fields related to contests such as First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, Birthday, and more. The fields on the form are dynamically connected to the fields in the collection for you, so each time a site visitor fills out the form, the collection is updated with the data that they submitted. 

Also, you can manually add additional fields to the form, such as an anniversary or a signature, and manually connect them to new fields you add to the collection... as you would any other collection.

Wix App collections contain information about the items in your Wix App. For example, if you have Wix Stores on your site, your Products collection will contain information about the products you sell in your store. The fields (columns) in the collection provide information about each item (row), such as the item's name, stock number, price, and image.

Every time you add a new app item or make changes to an existing app item in your dashboard, the changes are automatically reflected in your app collection. 

• Some regular Wix App collections are read-only (that's why the table cells are all gray), so any changes you want to make must be done in the relevant app manager. 
• Some regular Wix App collections contain fields that are read-write and can be managed from the collection itself. The table cells for those fields are white. For example, see Wix Portfolio's collections.
• Wix App starter collections are read-write and are totally customizable, like any collection you create manually.

For more information about the specific fields in each Wix App collection, see the App's section in the table of contents here.

You can use the information in these collections just like you would use information in a collection you created yourself. With the data in Wix App collections you can do the following:

• Display content from App collections in your page elements.
• Link to your apps pages: You can create a customized page with elements that link to your app's built-in dynamic pages such as Stores/Product pages or Bookings/Service pages.
• Create your own customized dynamic pages based on your app collections.
• Create a collection with additional information about the items in your app, and use reference fields or dataset filtering to display the additional information on your site. 
•  Create, update, and delete data in some regular Wix App collections. This is only applicable for fields that are read-write. 

Note Some Wix App collections are read-only and cannot be edited.

You can also write code that references these collections to add customized features to your apps. Learn how here. See the app examples in the Velo Examples site, as well as the app code articles for each app.

You can view information about the specific fields (columns) of an app in the "Collection Fields" article in the app's section here. Each article lists the fields in the collection, including the field name, field key, field type, a brief description, whether the field can connect to data, whether it can be sorted or filtered, and whether it is read-only or read-write. 

Note Wix App starter collection fields are read-write and can be changed like any collection you create manually. Some regular Wix App collection fields are either read-only and can only be changed from the relevant app manager in your Dashboard, while some are read-write and can be created and edited manually.

Wix App collections have limited permissions that cannot be changed. Each collection permission (read, create, update, delete) is assigned a role.

You can see the collection's permission settings by clicking Permissions in the CMS.

Permissions affect what your visitors can do with the collection content. 

When using code to perform data operations, you can override collection permission restrictions by using WixDataOptions.

You have the option to hide Wix App collections, so they are not displayed anywhere in the CMS.