What can the separator key do?

[evbo]

In the docs, the separator is used in 2 different ways:

1. account#${name}
2. account#
3. user-email#${email}

I have 2 questions:

1. What does each case mean?
2. Why does the third case use a hyphen, "-", instead of just calling it "email#${email}" (especially since camelCase - not kebab-case is otherwise used)?

[dev-embedthis]

Those three are all example of one use-case.

Value templates are just strings and the "${var}" are not Javascript templates, but rather references to other fields in the model.

So:

account#${name} will translate to something like: account#Peter
account# is just account#
user-email#$(email} could be user-email#user@example.com

ie. ${field} are expanded using the field value supplied in the api.

So "-" is nothing special. Just a character in the string. Case is sensitive.

[evbo]

Thanks, but why would someone want # at the end of account if it's not separating anything? Is it completely arbitrary or is there a valid use case for that.

[dev-embedthis]

The # is just a character like any other. Not really a good reason on a PK. In an SK, it helps to have a consistent prefix lead for "BeginsWith" queries. We use this pattern for SKs so all models have the same leading prefix regardless of whether they have following ${vars}

[tripplilley]

In the prefix case, it's also acting as an explicit field terminator. So you can be sure that a BeginsWith query for cat# will match only kittens, while one for catalog# will match catalogs.