Defined Types

You can think of DefinedTypes as a kind of dictionary of possible values for a particular thing. The particular thing is the 'defined type'. In Rock, developers can define types of reusable fields and their possible values using this generic entity (DefinedType and DefinedValue; stored in the respective tables of the same name). For example, there is a well-known DefinedType called Record Type which has the following DefinedValues: Person and Business. There is another type called Record Status which has these values: Active, Inactive, and Pending.

DefinedTypes are named, have a description, can have a category, can be ordered, and can also be further specified by a FieldType. DefinedValues are named, can have a description, and be ordered.

NOTE: By convention, any entity that has a property that ends with *ValueId is a reference to a DefinedValue.

Instead of having to create many miscellaneous entities and tables to hold these various dictionary-lookup values, developers can simply rely on DefinedTypes in the Rock framework to manage this data.