Data Extension Types
Overview
This topic discussed the types of data that can be used with configured data extensions.
Built-In Data Types
These data types are supported without additional configuration:
string
: A string, or enum-like type with a fixed set of possible values, set with the options property for the type.int
: A 32-bit signed integerlong
: A 64-bit signed integerdecimal
: A floating point number with arbitrary precision, which internally uses base 10 representation and so is appropriate for financial calculationsdatetime
: A value which includes a date and a timedate
: The same asdatetime
except that no time component is included.boolean
: A datatype than can have either the valuetrue
orfalse
Note
The type can be omitted. If so, the default type of
string
will be used.Booleans can take a number
0
or1
, which will be interpreted asfalse
ortrue
respectively.
Date Types
datetime
The datetime
type includes a date and a time, with precision to milliseconds, and includes a time-zone context which by default will be the policy’s time zone. In the API these are passed as strings using ISO8601 format, such as "2023-07-15T12:30:00−07:00"
.
Clients may express date time values with any time zone, but they will be handled according to the time zone for the quote or policy. For example, if the time zone for a policy is America/Los_Angeles
but a startTime
of 2023-07-15T00:00:00Z
(which specifies UTC) then the start time of the policy will be July 15, 2023 at 8AM (which equals midnight in UTC).
Note
ISO 8601 allows for times to be expressed to milliseconds precision, such as 2023-07-15T12:30:00.444−07:00
. The milliseconds component is optional and will be interpreted as zero if it is not included.
date
The date
is the same as datetime
except that no time or time zone component is included. These are passed by a string such as "2023-04-15"
.
Custom Data Types
Along with built-in data types, you can use custom data types to manage more complicated or specialized data.
See the Custom Data Types topic for details.
Limitations
string
types are limited to a maximum of 20,000 characters.