_id or separate "pkey" ID
tl;dr: Is it best practice to use a custom field (generated with UUID) as primary key, or use the built in _id that is generated.
Context:
Right now, I have a collection of tables:
users, documents, documentFragments etc. Each have their own unique "primary key", so for example, in the users table, I have a field userID, in the documents table, I have documentID, etc.
In schema.ts, I'm linking together using the v.id, so for example, each document fragment has a field sourceDocument: v.id('documents').
At this point, is it even worth it to have the primary key UUID field (outside of the userID, since that is matching up with Clerk). That is, should I just remove the documentID and fragmentID field, and just use the _id that is generated? I originally had the custom field so I could "tag" them with a prefix that denoted what type, so for example: "doc_<UUID>".2 Replies
Thanks for posting in <#1088161997662724167>.
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The provided
_id field is designed to be the primary key for the document. It's not just a unique value, but it also contains encoding that tells Convex what table it's from, when the document was added, and some other stuff. You can read more about it here (footnote 5): https://stack.convex.dev/how-convex-works#footnote-labelHow Convex Works
A deep dive on how Convex's reactive database works internally.