Providing "deeper" data to placeholders

Question

My understanding is that the fields structure in routes data should be fairly flat, having just the fields and then a value beneath.

Example:

---
name: about
placeholders:
  appname-main:
  - componentName: Heading
    fields:
      titleField:
        value: Page Title
      imageField:
        value:
          src: "/assets/img/logo.png"
          alt: Logo

I would like to instead provide a "deeper" set of data to a placeholder component. For example, I'd like to provide a image carousel component with an array of objects, each object containing image source, slide title, tags, etc.

Something like this:

---
name: about
placeholders:
  appname-main:
  - componentName: Carousel
    fields:
      data:
      - title:
          value: Image One
        img:
          value:
            src: "/assets/img/img1.png"
            alt: image one
        tags:
          value: tag1, tag2
      - title:
          value: Image Two
        img:
          value:
            src: "/assets/img/img2.png"
            alt: image two
        tags:
          value: tag2, tag3

Is this type of deeper data structure allowed? If so, how would the associated sitecore definitions file be structured?

Also, is this even a reasonable way to set things up? I am a front-end dev -- not a Sitecore dev -- so am unsure if this is how data would be setup within Sitecore.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

Array fields cannot be defined directly on an item, but the Content List field type can hold an array of references to other content items - each with their own set of fields.

Here's an example of defining a content list field's data, and the field definition for the content list field.