---
title: "Referencing Properties"
slug: "referencing-properties"
updated: 2024-10-25T10:45:07Z
published: 2024-10-25T10:45:07Z
canonical: "learn.servitly.com/referencing-properties"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://learn.servitly.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Referencing Properties

Properties can be used in different ways, for instance:

- You can display the value in a page template
- You can include the value in a text template (e.g. Mail Body)
- You can use the property as filtering condition or sorting criteria in an API request.

## Property value storage and access

Properties values are saved in the object, directly at the first level in case of predefined properties, else into a sublevel named "properties".

```json
{
 "id": "123",
 "name": "Boiler",
 "properties": {
    "prop1" : "foo",
    "prop2" : "bar"
 }
}
```

Properties do not have historical values, so at any time only the last updated value can be accessed.

The access to a property is made by using the dot notation, so you can access properties belonging to the related objects (e.g. thing → location → customer).

Custom properties require including also the "*properties."* sub-path*,* this is because custom properties values are stored under the parent object sub-node named "*properties*".

For instance, this is a JSON describing a thing.

```json
{
	"id": "5aeae841005da10006e6be35",
	"name": "Hall",
	"serialNumber": "OVENx200014",
	"customer": {
		"id": "5aeae80405c5940006f7befe",
		"name": "Ristorante Fornaroli",
		"country": "Italy",
		"properties": {
			"vatNumber": "1234567890"
		},
		"type": "BUSINESS",
		"code": "C000012"
	},
	"location": {
		"id": "5aeae8054e22a20006f61476",
		"country": "Italy",
		"name": "Cisliano",
		"gpsPosition": "45.444669,8.990243",
		"properties": {
			"address": "Via Montefeltro 140, 20080 Cisliano, MI",
			"city": "Cisliano"
		},
		"partner": {
			"id": "5cf5270f2d4d4a0008f5a27c",
			"name": "Oven Service"
		},
		"metrics": {
			"performance": {
				"value": 0.5256877229073239,
				"lastUpdateTimestamp": 1632961832517
			}
		}
	},
	"gpsPosition": "45.47072521359533,8.889312744140627",
	"properties": {
		"serviceDueDate": 1633108201324,
		"status": "STANDBY"
	},
	"activationDate": 1525344321757,
	"thingDefinition": {
		"id": "5c795c602074420008bcd6ef",
		"name": "Oven-1200w",
		"description": "Oven 1200w with fan and steam.",
		"properties": {
			"fooBar2": "baz"
		}
	},
	"serviceLevel": {
		"id": "5aeae7a7d554780006bc0fed",
		"name": "Free",
		"level": 300,
		"alertingFeature": false,
		"notificationsFeature": false,
		"_default": true,
		"features": {
			"OEE": false,
			"Cookings": true,
			"System_Status": true,
			"Energy": false
		}
	},
	"connectionStatus": 1,
	"connectionStatusLastUpdateTimestamp": 1620735199626,
	"partner": {
		"id": "5cf5270f2d4d4a0008f5a27c",
		"name": "Oven Service"
	}
}
```

## Displaying Properties

When displaying a property within the page, the system uses the Label of the property, which can be localized according to the defined translations, see the [Labels](/docs/labels) article.

Depending on the property name, the widget retrieves the value from the context object (e.g. thing, location, customer, partner).

Here are reported some details-widgets for the various objects.

### Thing Details

```xml
<thing-details-widget title="Thing Details">
   <property name="name"></property>
   <property name="properties.fooBar"></property>
   <property name="thingDefinition.name"></property>
   <property name="thingDefinition.properties.fooBar2"></property>
   <property name="location.name"></property>
   <property name="location.properties.address"></property>
   <property name="customer.name"></property>
   <property name="customer.properties.vatNumber"></property>
</thing-details-widget>
```

### Location Details

```xml
<location-details-widget title="Location Details">
   <property name="name"></property>
   <property name="properties.address"></property>
   <property name="customer.name"></property>
   <property name="customer.properties.vatNumber"></property>
</location-details-widget>
```

### Customer Details

```xml
<customer-details-widget title="Customer Details">
   <property name="name"></property>
   <property name="properties.vatNumber"></property>
</customer-details-widget>
```

You can use properties also into other widgets, for instance:

- [Thing List](/docs/thing-list-widget)
- [Location List](/docs/location-list-widget)
- [Customer List](/docs/customer-list-widget)
- [Partner Details](/docs/partner-details-widget)
- [Partner List](/docs/partner-list-widget)
- and more...