Quick Start

Every task below is shown three ways — the web interface, the oi CLI, and the REST API. They reach the same endpoints, so pick whichever suits you; nothing here depends on choosing one over another.

Prerequisites

An oikapi instance — for managed customers this is provisioned by our team; for self-hosted deployments this is provided by your administrator
For the CLI tab, the oi CLI installed — see Installation

Connect to your instance

Open your instance URL in a browser and sign in. If you have not been sent an invitation yet, ask an administrator to send you one — see Users & Roles.

oi login https://your-instance.example.com

Run oi whoami to verify your connection and see which principal your credential authenticates as. Credentials are stored in your system keychain, so you only log in once.

Authenticate with an API key or an OAuth2 token and send it as a bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer <token>

See Authentication for issuing keys and tokens.

Create your first table

Go to Applications and open the application the table belongs to.
Select the Tables tab.
Choose Create Table, then give it a name and a display name.
Open the new table and add fields — title as text, budget as decimal.

Every table belongs to an application; there is no way to create one outside of an application. See Applications.

The CLI reads and inspects schema — oi table list and oi table describe — but it does not create tables directly. Create them in the web interface, or define them as part of an application you keep in version control:

oi init myapp              # scaffold an app, tables included
oi validate myapp          # check it before pushing
oi push myapp              # apply it to your instance

This is the path to prefer when a schema change should be reviewable and repeatable across environments. See App Development.

POST /api/apps/system/tables
{
  "name": "projects",
  "display_name": "Projects"
}

Then add fields:

POST /api/apps/system/tables/projects/fields
{
  "name": "title",
  "type": "text",
  "required": true
}

POST /api/apps/system/tables/projects/fields
{
  "name": "budget",
  "type": "decimal",
  "config": {"precision": 10, "scale": 2}
}

Your table is now live. It has full REST endpoints for CRUD operations, filtering, pagination, and sorting — no additional setup required.

Create and query records

Open the table from Applications → your app → Tables. Use New Record to add one, and the column headers to sort and filter the list.

# Create a record
oi record create system.projects '{"title": "Website Redesign", "budget": "25000.00"}'

# List records
oi record list system.projects

# Fetch one by id
oi record get system.projects <id>

POST /api/apps/system/tables/projects/records
{
  "title": "Website Redesign",
  "budget": "25000.00"
}

GET /api/apps/system/tables/projects/records
GET /api/apps/system/tables/projects/records?filter=gt(budget,10000)

Install a core app

Instead of building from scratch, you can install a pre-built app. Its tables, roles, and permissions are created for you.

Go to Marketplace, choose an application, and install it.

# Install from a source directory
oi app install ./crm

# ...or from a built package file
oi app install ./crm-1.0.0.oikapp

# Your CRM is now live with tables, roles, and permissions
oi record list crm.leads

Upload a .oikapp file as multipart form data, field package:

POST /api/applications/install

To check what an install would do without performing it, post the same multipart body to POST /api/applications/check.

See Core Apps for the full list of available applications.

Next steps

Field Types — All supported field types
Business Rules — Add validation and automation
API Reference — Complete API documentation
Building Apps — Create custom applications