Properties are Guiding, not for Restricting
Properties that are applied to artifacts or folders are there to serve as assisting information.
Similar to subversion properties, properties in Artifactory are stored by-value on items.
When you define a property-set with 'strongly-typed' property values, those values are used to provide an intuitive, guiding UI for tagging and locating items. The actual value does not force a strong relationship to the original property-set's predefined values. This is by design, in order to not slow-down common repository operations and for keeping artifacts management simple by allowing properties to change and evolve freely over time, without worrying about breaking older property rules.
Properties are therefore a helping, and not a restricting feature.
Attaching and Reading Properties via REST API
Properties are a special form of metadata and they are stored on items just like any metadata - in XML form. In fact, you can view properties not only from the Artifacts:Properties tab, but also from the Artifacts:Metadata tab, in which you can examine properties as they are stored in XML form. The properties XML is using the properties root tag and has a very simple format.
You can set, get and remove properties from repository items via REST API, as you would do with any other XML-based metadata. Please follow the attaching and reading metadata chapter for instructions on how this can be achieved.
