Database records

In TYPO3, a record refers to an individual piece of content or data that is stored in the database. Each record is part of a table and represents a specific entity, such as a page, a content element, a backend user, or an extension configuration.

TYPO3 uses a modular structure where different types of data are managed as records, making it easy to organize and manipulate content.

Understanding records in TYPO3 is fundamental, as they are the building blocks for managing content and data within the system.

Content on this page

Common examples of records in TYPO3:

Page records: These represent pages in the page tree, which structure the website. They are stored in table pages.
Content records: These include text, images, videos, or any other element placed within a page. They are stored in table tt_content.
Backend user records: Information about users who have access to the TYPO3 backend. They are stored in table be_users. The backend user groups they are organized in are stored in table be_groups.
System records: System records control the configuration and management of the TYPO3 system. Examples include file references, file mounts, or categories.
Extension-specific records: Extensions often define custom records to store specific data, such as products for a shop system or events for a calendar.

Technical structure of a record:

Each record is stored in a database table. Each row represents one record. Each column represents a field of the record or some kind of metadata.

A record typically includes a unique identifier in column uid, the id of the page record on which it is located in column pid, columns for various attributes (for example, title, content), and metadata like creation and modification timestamps, visibility, information on translation and workspace handling. A record can have relations to other records.

TCA (Table Configuration Array)

TYPO3 uses the TCA to define how records of a specific table are structured, how they are displayed in the backend, and how they interact with other parts of the system. See the TCA Reference for details.

Types and subtypes in records

In TYPO3, different types and subtypes of records are often stored in the same database table, even though not all types share the same columns. This approach allows for flexibility and efficiency in handling diverse content and data structures within a unified system.

TYPO3 uses a single-table inheritance strategy, where records of various types are distinguished by a specific field, often named type. For historical reasons the field is named CType for content elements and doktype for pages. The field that is used for the type is defined in TCA in ctrl > type. The types itself are stored in types.

This allows TYPO3 to store related records, such as different content types, in a shared table like tt_content while supporting custom fields for each record type.

For content elements in table tt_content there is a second level of subtypes in use where the field CType contains the value "list" and the field list-type contains the actual type. This second level of types exists for historic reasons. Read more about it in chapter Content Elements & Plugins.

Extbase domain models

TYPO3 extensions based on Extbase typically introduce a class inheriting from \TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\DomainObject\AbstractEntity to represent a record fully or partially within the domain of the extension. Multiple Extbase models can store their data in the same database table. Additionally, the same record can be represented in various ways by different Extbase models, depending on the specific requirements of each model.