@sanity/preview-kit

@sanity/preview-kit

Sanity.io toolkit for building live-as-you-type content preview experiences and visual editing.

• Installation
• @sanity/preview-kit/client
  • Visual Editing with Content Source Maps
    • Enhanced Sanity client with createClient
      • studioUrl
      • encodeSourceMap
      • encodeSourceMapAtPath
      • logger
      • resultSourceMap
  • Using the Content Source Map with custom logic
  • Using Perspectives
• @sanity/preview-kit
  • Live real-time preview for React
    • 1. Create a getClient utility
    • 2. Define a <LiveQueryProvider /> component
    • 3. Making a Remix route conditionally preview draft
    • 4. Adding the useLiveQuery hook to components that need to re-render in real-time
      • Implementing a Loading UI with useLiveQuery
      • Optimizing performance
    • Advanced usage
      • Fine-tuning cache
      • Content Source Map features
  • Release new version
• License

Installation

npm i @sanity/preview-kit @sanity/client

pnpm i @sanity/preview-kit @sanity/client

yarn add @sanity/preview-kit @sanity/client

@sanity/preview-kit/client

Visual Editing with Content Source Maps

Note

Content Source Maps are available as an API for select Sanity enterprise customers. Contact our sales team for more information.

You can use Visual Editing with any framework, not just React. Read our guide for how to get started.

Enhanced Sanity client with createClient

Preview Kit's enhanced Sanity client is built on top of @sanity/client and is designed to be a drop-in replacement. It extends the client configuration with options for returning encoded metadata from Content Source Maps.

// Remove your vanilla `@sanity/client` import
// import {createClient, type ClientConfig} from '@sanity/client'

// Use the enhanced client instead
import { createClient, type ClientConfig } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const config: ClientConfig = {
  // ...base config options

  // Required: when "encodeSourceMap" is enabled
  // Set it to relative or absolute URL of your Sanity Studio
  studioUrl: '/studio', // or 'https://your-project-name.sanity.studio'
  
  // Required: for encoded metadata from Content Source Maps
  // 'auto' is the default, you can also use `true` or `false`
  encodeSourceMap: 'auto',
}

const client = createClient(config)

studioUrl

Required when encodeSourceMap is active, and can either be an absolute URL:

import { createClient } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  studioUrl: 'https://your-company.com/studio',
})

Or a relative path if the Studio is hosted on the same deployment, or embedded in the same app:

import { createClient } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  studioUrl: '/studio',
})

encodeSourceMap

Accepts "auto", the default, or a boolean. Controls when to encode the content source map into strings using @vercel/stega encoding. When "auto" is used a best-effort environment detection is used to see if the environment is a Vercel Preview deployment. On a different hosting provider, or in local development, configure this option to make sure it is only enabled in non-production deployments.

import { createClient } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  encodeSourceMap: process.env.VERCEL_ENV === 'preview',
})

encodeSourceMapAtPath

By default source maps are encoded into all strings that can be traced back to a document field, except for URLs and ISO dates. We also make some exceptions for fields like, document._type, document._id and document.slug.current, that we've seen leading to breakage if the string is altered as well as for Portable Text.

You can customize this behavior using encodeSourceMapAtPath:

import { createClient } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  encodeSourceMapAtPath: (props) => {
    if (props.path[0] === 'externalUrl') {
      return false
    }
    // The default behavior is packaged into `filterDefault`, allowing you enable encoding fields that are skipped by default
    return props.filterDefault(props)
  },
})

logger

Pass a console into logger to get detailed debug info and reports on which fields are encoded and which are skipped:

import { createClient } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  logger: console,
})

An example report:

[@sanity/preview-kit]: Creating source map enabled client
[@sanity/preview-kit]: Stega encoding source map into result
  [@sanity/preview-kit]: Paths encoded: 3, skipped: 17
  [@sanity/preview-kit]: Table of encoded paths
  ┌─────────┬──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┬────────┐
  │ (index) │              path            │           value           │ length │
  ├─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼────────┤
  │    0    │ "footer[0].children[0].text" │ '"The future is alrea...' │   67   │
  │    1    │ "footer[1].children[0].text" │     'Robin Williams'      │   14   │
  │    2    │            "title"           │     'Visual Editing'      │   14   │
  └─────────┴──────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴────────┘
  [@sanity/preview-kit]: List of skipped paths [
    'footer[]._key',
    'footer[].children[]._key',
    'footer[].children[]._type',
    'footer[]._type',
    'footer[].style',
    '_type',
    'slug.current',
  ]

resultSourceMap

This option is always enabled if encodeSourceMap. It's exposed here to be compatible with @sanity/client and custom use cases where you want content source maps, but not the encoding.

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  // This option can only enable content source maps, not disable it when `encodeSourceMap` resolves to `true`
  resultSourceMap: true,
})

const { result, resultSourceMap } = await client.fetch(query, params, {
  filterResponse: false,
})

console.log(resultSourceMap) // `resultSourceMap` is now available, even if `encodeSourceMap` is `false`

Using the Content Source Map with custom logic

If you're building your own custom preview logic you can use mapToEditLinks to skip encoding hidden metadata into strings, and access the edit links directly:

import { createClient, mapToEditLinks } from '@sanity/preview-kit/client'

const client = createClient({
  ...config,
  resultSourceMap: true, // Tells Content Lake to include content source maps in the response
  encodeSourceMap: false, // Disable the default encoding behavior
})

// const result = await client.fetch(query, params)
const { result, resultSourceMap } = await client.fetch(
  query,
  params,
  { filterResponse: false } // This option is returns the entire API response instead of selecting just `result`
)
const studioUrl = 'https://your-company.com/studio'
const editLinks = mapToEditLinks({ result, resultSourceMap }, studioUrl)

const title = result.title
const titleEditLink = editLinks.title

console.log(title, titleEditLink)

Using Perspectives

The perspective option can be used to specify special filtering behavior for queries. The default value is raw, which means no special filtering is applied, while published and previewDrafts can be used to optimize for specific use cases. Read more about this option:

• Perspectives in Sanity docs
• Perspectives in @sanity/client README

@sanity/preview-kit

Note

This is the new docs for @sanity/preview-kit v2. If you're looking for docs for v1 APIs, like definePreview and usePreview, they're available on the v1 branch..

There's a full migration guide available here.

If you're looking for React Server Component and Next.js docs, they're in the next-sanity readme.

Live real-time preview for React

Note

The examples in this README use Remix, you can find Next.js specific examples in the next-sanity README. Including information on how to build live previews in React Server Components with the new app-router.

Write GROQ queries like @sanity/client and have them resolve in-memory, locally. Updates from Content Lake are streamed in real-time with sub-second latency.

Requires React 18, support for other libraries like Solid, Svelte, Vue etc are planned. For now you can use @sanity/groq-store directly.

Get started in 3 steps:

1. Create a getClient utility that returns a @sanity/client instance.
2. Define a <LiveQueryProvider /> configuration.
3. Refactor the root layout of your app to conditionally wrap it in <LiveQueryProvider /> when it's asked to preview drafts.
4. Use the useLiveQuery hook in components that you want to re-render in real-time as your documents are edited.

1. Create a getClient utility

As <LiveQueryProvider /> is configured with a @sanity/client instance it makes sense to create a utility for it. Doing so makes it easy to ensure the server-side and client-side client are configured the same way.

app/lib/sanity.ts

import { createClient } from '@sanity/client'
import type { SanityClient } from '@sanity/client'

export function getClient({
  preview,
}: {
  preview?: { token: string }
}): SanityClient {
  const client = createClient({
    projectId: 'your-project-id',
    dataset: 'production',
    apiVersion: '2023-06-20',
    useCdn: true,
    perspective: 'published',
  })
  if (preview) {
    if (!preview.token) {
      throw new Error('You must provide a token to preview drafts')
    }
    return client.withConfig({
      token: preview.token,
      useCdn: false,
      ignoreBrowserTokenWarning: true,
      perspective: 'previewDrafts',
    })
  }
  return client
}

2. Define a <LiveQueryProvider /> component

Create a new file for the provider, so it can be loaded with React.lazy and avoid increasing the bundle size in production. Ensuring code needed for live previewing drafts are only loaded when needed.

app/PreviewProvider.tsx

import { LiveQueryProvider } from '@sanity/preview-kit'
import { useMemo } from 'react'
import { getClient } from '~/lib/sanity'

export default function PreviewProvider({
  children,
  token,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode
  token: string
}) {
  const client = useMemo(() => getClient({ preview: { token } }), [token])
  return <LiveQueryProvider client={client}>{children}</LiveQueryProvider>
}

Only the client prop is required. For debugging you can pass a logger={console} prop.

3. Making a Remix route conditionally preview draft

Here's the Remix route we'll be adding live preview of drafts, it's pretty basic:

// app/routes/index.tsx
import type { LoaderArgs } from '@vercel/remix'
import { useLoaderData } from '@remix-run/react'

import { getClient } from '~/lib/sanity'
import type { UsersResponse } from '~/UsersList'
import { UsersList, usersQuery } from '~/UsersList'
import { Layout } from '~/ui'

export async function loader({ request }: LoaderArgs) {
  const client = getClient({})
  const url = new URL(request.url)
  const lastId = url.searchParams.get('lastId') || ''

  const users = await client.fetch<UsersResponse>(usersQuery, { lastId })

  return { users, lastId }
}

export default function Index() {
  const { users, lastId } = useLoaderData<typeof loader>()

  return (
    <Layout>
      <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />
    </Layout>
  )
}

Now let's import the PreviewProvider component we created in the previous step. To ensure we don't increase the production bundle size, we'll use React.lazy to code-split the component. The React.lazy API requires a React.Suspense boundary, so we'll add that too.

import { lazy, Suspense } from 'react'

const PreviewProvider = lazy(() => import('~/PreviewProvider'))

Before we can add <PreviewProvider /> to the layout we need to update the loader to include the props it needs. We'll use an environment variable called SANITY_API_PREVIEW_DRAFTS to control when to live preview drafts, and store a viewer API token in SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN.

Update the const client = getClient({}) call to:

const token = process.env.SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN
const preview =
  process.env.SANITY_API_PREVIEW_DRAFTS === 'true' ? { token } : undefined
const client = getClient({ preview })

Update the loader return statement from return {users, lastId} to:

return { preview, users, lastId }

And add preview to useLoaderData:

const { preview, users, lastId } = useLoaderData<typeof loader>()

Then make the render conditional based on wether preview is set:

const children = <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />

return (
  <Layout>
    {preview ? (
      <Suspense fallback={children}>
        <PreviewProvider token={preview.token}>{children}</PreviewProvider>
      </Suspense>
    ) : (
      children
    )}
  </Layout>
)

After putting everything together the route should now look like this:

// app/routes/index.tsx
import type { LoaderArgs } from '@vercel/remix'
import { useLoaderData } from '@remix-run/react'
import { lazy, Suspense } from 'react'

import { getClient } from '~/lib/sanity'
import type { UsersResponse } from '~/UsersList'
import { UsersList, usersQuery } from '~/UsersList'
import { Layout } from '~/ui'

const PreviewProvider = lazy(() => import('~/PreviewProvider'))

export async function loader({ request }: LoaderArgs) {
  const token = process.env.SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN
  const preview =
    process.env.SANITY_API_PREVIEW_DRAFTS === 'true' ? { token } : undefined
  const client = getClient({ preview })
  const url = new URL(request.url)
  const lastId = url.searchParams.get('lastId') || ''

  const users = await client.fetch<UsersResponse>(usersQuery, { lastId })

  return { preview, users, lastId }
}

export default function Index() {
  const { preview, users, lastId } = useLoaderData<typeof loader>()

  const children = <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />

  return (
    <Layout>
      {preview ? (
        <Suspense fallback={children}>
          <PreviewProvider token={preview.token!}>{children}</PreviewProvider>
        </Suspense>
      ) : (
        children
      )}
    </Layout>
  )
}

4. Adding the useLiveQuery hook to components that need to re-render in real-time

Let's look at what the <UsersList> component looks like, before we add the hook:

// app/UsersList.tsx
import groq from 'groq'

import { ListView, ListPagination } from '~/ui'

export const usersQuery = groq`{
  "list": *[_type == "user" && _id > $lastId] | order(_id) [0...20],
  "total": count(*[_type == "user"]),
}`

export interface UsersResponse {
  list: User[]
  total: number
}

export interface UsersListProps {
  data: UsersResponse
  lastId: string
}

export function UsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data, lastId } = props

  return (
    <>
      <ListView list={data.list} />
      <ListPagination total={data.total} lastId={lastId} />
    </>
  )
}

To make this component connect to your preview provider you need to add the useLiveQuery. You don't have to refactor your components so that the hook is only called when there's a parent <LiveQueryProvider />, it's safe to call it unconditionally. If there's no <LiveQueryProvider /> it behaves as if the hook had this implementation:

export function useLiveQuery(initialData) {
  return [initialData, false]
}

Thus it's fairly easy to add conditional live preview capabilities to UsersList, simply add hook to your imports:

import { useLiveQuery } from '@sanity/preview-kit'

And replace this:

const { data, lastId } = props

With this:

const { data: initialData, lastId } = props
const [data] = useLiveQuery(initialData, usersQuery, { lastId })

All together now:

// app/UsersList.tsx
import { useLiveQuery } from '@sanity/preview-kit'
import groq from 'groq'

import { ListView, ListPagination } from '~/ui'

export const usersQuery = groq`{
  "list": *[_type == "user" && _id > $lastId] | order(_id) [0...20],
  "total": count(*[_type == "user"]),
}`

export interface UsersResponse {
  list: User[]
  total: number
}

export interface UsersListProps {
  data: UsersResponse
  lastId: string
}

export function UsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data: initialData, lastId } = props
  const [data] = useLiveQuery(initialData, usersQuery, { lastId })

  return (
    <>
      <ListView list={data.list} />
      <ListPagination total={data.total} lastId={lastId} />
    </>
  )
}

And done! You can optionally optimize it further by adding a loading UI while it loads, or improve performance by adding a custom isEqual function to reduce React re-renders if there's a lot of data that changes but isn't user visible (SEO metadata and such).

Implementing a Loading UI with useLiveQuery

The best way to do this is to add a wrapper component that is only used in preview mode that calls the useLiveQuery hook.

export function UsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data, lastId } = props

  return (
    <>
      <ListView list={data.list} />
      <ListPagination total={data.total} lastId={lastId} />
    </>
  )
}

export function PreviewUsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data: initialData, lastId } = props
  const [data, loading] = useLiveQuery(initialData, usersQuery, { lastId })

  return (
    <>
      <PreviewStatus loading={loading} />
      <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />
    </>
  )
}

Change the layout from:

const children = <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />

return (
  <Layout>
    {preview ? (
      <Suspense fallback={children}>
        <PreviewProvider token={preview.token!}>{children}</PreviewProvider>
      </Suspense>
    ) : (
      children
    )}
  </Layout>
)

To this:

return (
  <Layout>
    {preview ? (
      <Suspense fallback={children}>
        <PreviewProvider token={preview.token!}>
          <PreviewUsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />
        </PreviewProvider>
      </Suspense>
    ) : (
      <UsersList data={users} lastId={lastId} />
    )}
  </Layout>
)

Optimizing performance

Out of the box it'll only trigger a re-render of UsersList if the query response changed, using react-fast-compare under the hood. You can tweak this behavior by passing a custom isEqual function as the third argument to useLiveQuery if there's only some changes you want to trigger a re-render.

const [data] = useLiveQuery(
  initialData,
  usersQuery,
  { lastId },
  {
    // Only re-render in real-time if user ids and names changed, ignore all other differences
    isEqual: (a, b) =>
      a.list.every((aItem, index) => {
        const bItem = b.list[index]
        return aItem._id === bItem._id && aItem.name === bItem.name
      }),
  }
)

You can also use the React.useDeferredValue hook and a React.memo wrapper to further optimize performance by letting React give other state updates higher priority than the preview updates. It prevents the rest of your app from slowing down should there be too much Studio activity for the previews to keep up with:

import { memo, useDeferredValue } from 'react'

export function PreviewUsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data: initialData, lastId } = props
  const [snapshot] = useLiveQuery(initialData, usersQuery, { lastId })
  const data = useDeferredValue(snapshot)

  return <UsersList data={data} lastId={lastId} />
}

export const UsersList = memo(function UsersList(props: UsersListProps) {
  const { data, lastId } = props

  return (
    <>
      <ListView list={data.list} />
      <ListPagination total={data.total} lastId={lastId} />
    </>
  )
})

Advanced usage

Fine-tuning cache

The defaults set for the cache prop are optimized for most use cases, but are conservative since the size of your documents can vary a lot. And your queries might only use some document types and it's not necessary to cache every type. Thus you can fine-tune the cache by passing a custom cache prop to LiveQueryProvider:

import { LiveQueryProvider } from '@sanity/preview-kit'

return (
  <LiveQueryProvider
    client={client}
    cache={{
      // default: 3000, increased to 10000 for this example app as each document is small
      maxDocuments: 10000,
      // The default cache includes all document types, you can reduce the amount of documents
      // by only including the ones you need.
      // You can run the `array::unique(*._type)` GROQ query in `Vision` in your Studio to see how many types are in your dataset.
      // Just be careful that you don't forget the document types you might be using in strong references, such as `project` or `sanity.imageAsset`
      includeTypes: ['page', 'product', 'sanity.imageAsset'],
      // Turn off using a mutation EventSource listener, this means content updates will require a manual refresh
      listen: false,
    }}
    // If the cache is full it'll fallback to a polling interval mode, that refreshes every 10 seconds by default.
    // You can opt-in to having an error thrown instead by setting this to `0`.
    refreshInterval={10000}
    // Passing a logger gives you more information on what to expect based on your configuration
    logger={console}
  >
    {children}
  </LiveQueryProvider>
)

Content Source Map features

When the client instance is configured to client.config().resultSourceMap == true the LiveQueryProvider will opt-in to a faster and smarter cache than the default mode. It'll only listen for mutations on the documents that you are using in your queries, and apply the mutations to the cache in real-time. This mode is best-effort, and if you're relying on features such as upper you may want to disable this mode.

import { LiveQueryProvider } from '@sanity/preview-kit'

return (
  <LiveQueryProvider
    client={client}
    turboSourceMap={false}
    // Passing a logger gives you more information on what to expect based on your configuration
    logger={console}
  >
    {children}
  </LiveQueryProvider>
)

For data that can't be traced with Content Source Maps there's a background refresh interval. Depending on your queries you might want to tweak this interval to get the best performance.

import { LiveQueryProvider } from '@sanity/preview-kit'

return (
  <LiveQueryProvider
    client={client}
    // Refetch all queries every minute instead of the default 10 seconds
    refreshInterval={1000 * 60}
    // Passing a logger gives you more information on what to expect based on your configuration
    logger={console}
  >
    {children}
  </LiveQueryProvider>
)

Release new version

Run "CI & Release" workflow. Make sure to select the main branch and check "Release new version".

Semantic release will only release on configured branches, so it is safe to run release on any branch.

License

MIT-licensed. See LICENSE.