EntityTable is useful when any of the following criterias are true:

• Primary key is auto-generated (++id)
• The type is represented by a class with methods.

Else, if you are using method-less entities or primary key is not auto-generated, you can use Table instead.

EntityTable is a helper type that provides typings for Table based on supplied entity type and it’s primary key property. Methods such as Table.add(), Table.put() etc will expect plain javascript objects that corresponds to the provided entity type where the primary key is optional.

Differencies between Table<T> and EntityTable<T>

Dexie also exports a generic Table<T, TKey, TInsertType=T> that could be used instead of EntityTable if preferring so. Table<T, TKey, TInsertType=T> is the building block for EntityTable<T, KeyPropName>. It allows an optional 3rd argument TInsertType that is expected from Table.add(), Table.put() etc. That’s where we want to provide a version of our type where the primary key is optional (as it can be auto-generated).

EntityTable<T, KeyPropName> is new in Dexie 4 and provides syntactic sugar on top of Table<T, TKey, TInsertType>:

1. It defines the TInsertType where primary key is optional and any class methods are omitted (so that plain javascript objects can be provided to Table.add(), instead of having to construct using new())
2. It extracts the TKey type from T[KeyPropName]

Example with Table

import Dexie, { type Table } from 'dexie';

const db = new Dexie('FriendsDatabase') as Dexie & {
  friends: Table<Friend, number>;
};

interface Friend {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  age: string;
}

// Schema declaration:
db.version(1).stores({
  friends: `
    id,
    name,
    age`
});

Example with EntityTable

import Dexie, { type EntityTable } from 'dexie';

const db = new Dexie('FriendsDatabase') as Dexie & {
  friends: EntityTable<Friend, 'id'>;
};

interface Friend {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  age: string;
}

// Schema declaration:
db.version(1).stores({
  friends: `
    ++id,
    name,
    age`
});