Declaring target state

Target states describe what should exist in an external system — files, rows, embeddings. Learn how to declare them through connector APIs, nest container targets, and rely on CocoIndex to sync minimal creates, updates, and deletes.

Version: v 1.0.0-alpha48
Last reviewed: Apr 19, 2026

A target state represents what you want to exist in an external system. You declare target states in your code; CocoIndex keeps them in sync with your intent — creating, updating, or removing them as needed.

Terminology

A target is the external system you write to — a directory, a database table, a vector store collection, etc. In Python, targets are represented by objects like DirTarget and TableTarget. A target state is what you want to exist in that target — a specific file, row, or embedding.

CocoIndex treats your declarations as the source of truth: if you stop declaring a target state, CocoIndex will remove it from the target.

Examples of target states:

A file in a directory
A row in a database table
An embedding vector in a vector store

When your source data changes, CocoIndex compares the newly declared target states with those from the previous run and applies only the necessary changes.

Declaring target states

CocoIndex connectors provide targets with declare_* methods:

python

# Declare a file target state
dir_target.declare_file(filename="output.html", content=html)

# Declare a row target state
table_target.declare_row(row=DocEmbedding(...))

Where do targets come from?

Target states can be nested — a directory contains files, a table contains rows. The container itself is a target state you declare, and once it’s ready, you get a target to declare child target states within it.

Container target states (like a directory or table) are typically top-level — you can declare them directly. Child target states (like files or rows) require the container to be ready first.

Connectors provide convenience methods that mount the container and return a ready-to-use target in one step:

Example: writing a file to a directory

For simple cases where each processing component writes a single file, you can declare the file directly:

python

from cocoindex.connectors import localfs

# Declare a single file target state directly
localfs.declare_file(outdir / "output.html", html, create_parent_dirs=True)

When you need a DirTarget to declare multiple files, use the connector’s convenience method:

python

# Mount a directory target, get a ready-to-use DirTarget
dir_target = await localfs.mount_dir_target(outdir)

# Declare child target states (files)
dir_target.declare_file(filename="output.html", content=html)

Example: writing a row to PostgreSQL

This example uses a ContextKey to reference the database connection — see Context for how keys are defined and provided.

python

import asyncpg
import cocoindex as coco
from cocoindex.connectors import postgres

# Define a ContextKey for the database connection (provided in lifespan)
TARGET_DB = coco.ContextKey[asyncpg.Pool]("target_db")

# Mount a table target, get a ready-to-use TableTarget
table = await postgres.mount_table_target(
    TARGET_DB,
    table_name="doc_embeddings",
    table_schema=await postgres.TableSchema.from_class(
        DocEmbedding, primary_key=["id"]
    ),
)

# Declare a child target state (a row)
table.declare_row(row=DocEmbedding(...))

These convenience methods wrap mount_target(), which automatically derives the component path from the target’s globally unique key. See Processing Component for more on mounting APIs.

Type safety

Targets like DirTarget and TableTarget have two statuses: pending (just created) and resolved (after the container target state is ready). The type system tracks this — if you try to use a pending target before it’s resolved, type checkers like mypy will flag the error.

How CocoIndex syncs target states

Under the hood, CocoIndex compares your declared target states with the previous run and applies the minimal changes needed:

Target State	CocoIndex’s Action
Target State	On first declaration	When declared differently	When no longer declared
A database table	Create the table	Alter the table	Drop the table
A row in a database table	Insert the row	Update the row	Delete the row
A file in a directory	Create the file	Update the file	Delete the file

CocoIndex ensures containers exist before their contents are added, and properly cleans up contents when the container changes.

What happens when a target’s schema changes

When you change a container target state’s declaration (e.g., add a column to a table schema, change a primary key), CocoIndex detects the change and does its best to alter the target in place. If the change is too large to alter (e.g., changing primary keys), the target is dropped and recreated.

When a target is dropped and recreated, CocoIndex automatically reprocesses all affected components to backfill the data — you don’t need to manually trigger --full-reprocess. This is handled by the target connector’s child invalidation mechanism, which signals to CocoIndex whether the change is destructive (all children lost) or lossy (some data may be lost).

Generic target state APIs

For cases where connector-specific APIs don’t cover your needs, CocoIndex provides generic APIs:

declare_target_state() — declare a leaf target state
declare_target_state_with_child() — declare a target state that provides child target states

These are exported from cocoindex and used internally by connectors. For defining custom targets, see Custom Target States Connector.