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- ---
- title: Overview
- order: 1
- layout: page
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- [[datamodel.overview]]
- = Overview
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- The Vaadin Data Model is one of the core concepts of the library.
- There is a standard data interface that all UI components use to access and modify the application's data.
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- The most basic UI component for handling data is a field component that lets the user define a single value, for instance a text field for writing the name of a product or a dropdown menu for selecting which department an employee belongs to.
- See <<datamodel-fields.asciidoc#datamodel.fields,"Editing Values in Fields">> to learn how these components can be used on their own.
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- In most applications, there are business classes that represent real-world objects like a single employee or a product in an inventory.
- The user interface is structured as a form that lets the user edit all the different properties of a single business object instance.
- Vaadin Framework makes it easy to create forms for editing these sorts.
- You have full control over how you configure and lay out the individual input fields making up a form, and then you can use `Binder` to hook up those fields to a business object instance.
- <<datamodel-forms.asciidoc#datamodel.forms,"Binding Data to Forms">> shows how to bind data to fields.
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- There are UI components in the framework that lists multiple similar objects and lets the user view, select and in some cases even edit those objects.
- A listing component can get its data from an in-memory collection or lazily fetch it from some backend.
- In either case, there are options available for defining how the data is sorted and filtered before being displayed to the user.
- Read more about how to provide lists of data to these components in <<datamodel-providers.asciidoc#datamodel.providers,"Showing Many Items in a Listing">>. For using hierarchical data, see <<datamodel-hierarchical.asciidoc#datamodel.hierarchical,"Hierarchical Data">>.
- Using a listing component as an input field to select one or many of the listed items is described in <<datamodel-selection.asciidoc#datamodel.selection,"Selecting items">>.
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- Vaadin Data Model topic references::
- * <<datamodel-fields.asciidoc#datamodel.fields,"Editing Values in Fields">>
- * <<datamodel-forms.asciidoc#datamodel.forms,"Binding Data to Forms">>
- * <<datamodel-providers.asciidoc#datamodel.providers,"Showing Many Items in a Listing">>
- * <<datamodel-selection.asciidoc#datamodel.selection,"Selecting items">>
- * <<datamodel-hierarchical.asciidoc#datamodel.hierarchical,"Hierarchical Data">>
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