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Item providers are a means for accessing items from data sources. Developed for the Magnolia 6 UI, item providers are intended to help cover one or more of the following two generic use cases:

• Item provider definition in a sub app descriptor, usually in the detail sub app. 
• Item provider definition In a form containing composite and complex fields.  In this use, the provider replaces the former field transformer functionality that is part of the UI framework 5, but no longer part of the Magnolia 6 UI.

Advantages of

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item providers

Item Provider Strategy is Providers represent a much simpler solution than the 5 UI field transformers. An

• Now, an item provider only needs to know how to access the data. In contrast, the transformers in the 5 UI framework were responsible for both types of data operations – reading and writing. In 6 UI, data updates should be piped into the backend items via simple fields by means of Vaadin 8 datadinding (Binder objects).
  
  
• > unlike transfomers, item providers do not have to deal with now deprecated Vaadin 7 Item API and don't require manual ensuring that the child properties are populated within an item
• In addition:
• The number of item providers is much lower in Magnolia 6 UI, compared to a relatively high number of field transformers in the 5 UI.
• The provider implementations can handle also JSON structures, task and notifications items, assets or a specific product content items.

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• Item providers have a clearer concept of "chaining" meaning that unlike transformers they get a reference of an item from a previous level of the hierarchy, making the whole complex data binding process recursive (from parent to child to its children...).

Provider types

The following item provider types are currently available:

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