Different DashboardFox Data Type Explained

Version: DashboardFox v12

Role: Composer or higher

Permission: Composer access to the application

This article describes the data types DashboardFox uses internally to control how a field's underlying database value is post-processed before it's displayed in the client. Data types are set on each field in the App Builder (for fields permanently registered in an app) or via Composer's Add Formula dialog (for per-report transformations).

The list below covers every data type currently supported. We plan to simplify the picker in a future release by retiring several of the more niche or legacy entries — those are flagged in the Legacy section at the end. For new apps, prefer the entries in the Commonly used section.

Commonly used data types

These are the data types you'll set most often when building or maintaining apps.

Datatype	Description	Example
cha	Character / text. Values can be any text string and are sortable as text.	`String of Words`
num	Numeric. Values are expected to be numeric and sortable as numbers. Required for aggregations (Sum, Average, etc.) to work.	`4387`
dat	SQL Date Time, time-zone adjusted. Displays with timestamp; the time component automatically adjusts to each user's browser time zone. This is the default behavior for SQL datetime columns.	`4/2/2015 15:35`
dtz	SQL Date Time, no time-zone conversion. Displays with timestamp, but every user sees the same date and time regardless of their browser time zone. Use when "wall-clock" time matters and consistency across users is more important than localization.	`4/2/2015 15:35`
dpo	Date part only, time-zone adjusted. Displays the date only (no time), adjusted to each user's browser time zone. Use for "what calendar day was this, in my time zone?" reporting.	`4/2/2015`
doz	Date part only, no time-zone conversion. Displays the date only (no time); every user sees the same date regardless of their browser time zone. Use for calendar-day reporting where consistency matters more than localization (e.g. month-end close, daily counts).	`4/2/2015`
cur	Currency. Renders a numeric value with a currency symbol (defaults to `$`; the symbol can be styled at the instance level via branding policies).	`$564.25`
per	Percentage. Renders a numeric value with a `%` symbol. Pair with a numeric column already expressed as a percentage (e.g. `75.5` displays as `75.5%`).	`75.5%`

Time-zone behavior is an organizational decision. Browser-local conversion (dat / dpo) and no-conversion (dtz / doz) are both valid — they answer different questions. Browser-local: "what time was it for me when this happened?" No conversion: "what time was it on the server when this happened?" Pick one approach and apply it consistently across every date field in your app.

Specialized data types

Lower-frequency data types for specific source-data shapes or output behaviors. Supported, but not commonly needed.

Datatype	Description	Example
idt	Use when the underlying data source stores a date value without a time element. Functionally equivalent to a date-only display, but signals the source storage shape.	`4/2/2015`
tme	Time-only display. Strips the date portion and renders only the time component.	`15:35`
tsp	Oracle timestamp field. Use when the source column is Oracle's `TIMESTAMP` type rather than `DATE`.	`4/2/2015 15:35:00`
flk	File download link. Renders the field's value as a clickable download link to a file referenced by the underlying data.	(file link)

Legacy data types

The data types in this section are supported today but are planned for deprecation in a future release. New apps should avoid them; existing apps that use them will continue to work until the deprecation lands.

Most of these legacy types originated from a Unix-epoch timestamp integration pattern that's increasingly rare in modern database designs. For most use cases, the Commonly used date and time types (dat / dtz / dpo / doz) are the right modern replacement.

Datatype	Description	Example
udt	Unix date-time. Underlying data is stored as Unix epoch seconds (number of seconds since 1970); displayed as date and time.	`4/2/2015 15:35`
dmy	Unix date-time displayed as date part only.	`4/2/2015`
600	Unix date-time displayed as time part only.	`15:35`
tda	Convert a numeric value of seconds to days.	`86400` → `1`
thr	Convert a numeric value of seconds to hours.	`3600` → `1`
tmi	Convert a numeric value of seconds to minutes.	`60` → `1`
dhm	Convert a numeric value of seconds to a `D:H:M` duration string.	`6 days:10 hrs:30 min`
500	Unix date subtracted from current date/time, producing a duration in days.	`0.56`
501	Unix date subtracted from current date/time, producing a duration in hours.	`87.26`
502	Unix date subtracted from current date/time, producing a duration in minutes.	`59.86`
503	Unix date subtracted from current date/time, producing a duration in seconds.	`78`
504	Unix date subtracted from current date/time, producing a duration as `D:H:M`.	`6 days:10 hrs:30 min`
tmr	Display a time span (in seconds) as a count-down timer.	(countdown timer)
lnk	Internal hyperlink data type. Deprecated — replace with the Ad-hoc field builder feature when creating reports.	(hyperlink)
ddn	Report drill-down field. Deprecated — replace with the Ad-hoc field builder feature.	(drill-down)
800	Link field to internal HTML dialog. Deprecated — replace with the Ad-hoc field builder feature.	(HTML dialog link)
for	Internal-only marker for fields that have a SQL formula applied. Not a user-settable type.	n/a