Value types

The Kotlin SDK represents data with kotlinx.serialization JSON values, plus a small set of dedicated types for referring to tables and records. These are the building blocks passed to the CRUD builders and queries.

Record and table types

import com.surrealdb.kotlin.query.RecordId
import com.surrealdb.kotlin.query.Table

val table = Table("person")
val record = RecordId("person", "ada")

When these are bound into a query, the SDK renders them with the appropriate SurrealDB casting functions — type::table(name) for a Table and type::record(table, id) for a RecordId — so values are always passed safely.

The JSON value model

Beyond the record types above, all data is modelled as JsonElement. Read methods return a JsonElement, and write methods accept a JsonObject. Build payloads with buildJsonObject.

import kotlinx.serialization.json.buildJsonObject
import kotlinx.serialization.json.put

val data = buildJsonObject {
    put("name", "Ada")
    put("age", 36)
}

Learn more

• Table, RecordId, and RecordIdRange references

• Value (JSON model) reference

• Serialization for decoding into your own types