Working with Collections
A collection is a property that points to a scroll, rather than a field, in the underlying component for a component interface. A collection groups multiple fields in a scroll. All the fields in the scroll are mapped to a property. These properties are part of the collection.
You create collections the same way you create properties—drag the scroll from the component view into the component interface view. Consider these points when creating collections:
When you drag a scroll into the component interface view, all child scrolls come with it.
This is the same behavior that you would expect when creating a property. Child properties are always added automatically when you drag a field from the component view to the component interface view. After the property or collection has been created, you can delete individual child properties or collections manually, if necessary.
When you drag a scroll into the component interface view, all record fields contained in that scroll come with it—not just those from the record that defines the scroll.
The fields from all records at that scroll level are exposed as part of the same collection.
Keys that appear in parent and child scrolls are not added to child collections.
For the component interface to function as expected, the keys must remain synchronized at all levels of the component. Having keys at lower levels makes compromising this synchronization possible. Therefore, lower-level keys are not introduced into the component interface and are not exposed to the user because those keys have already been set at the parent level.
When you drag a child scroll into the component interface view, parent collections are created automatically.
For example, if you drag just the level-two scroll from the component view into the component interface view, a level-zero collection and a level-one collection are created automatically in the component interface. This hierarchy of collections is necessary so that you can navigate to the child collection at runtime.