contentful

What is contentful?

The contentful npm package is a JavaScript client for the Contentful Content Delivery API and Content Management API. It allows developers to fetch and manage content from Contentful's content infrastructure, making it easy to integrate content into web and mobile applications.

What are contentful's main functionalities?

Fetching Entries

This feature allows you to fetch entries from your Contentful space. The code sample demonstrates how to create a client and fetch all entries.

const contentful = require('contentful');
const client = contentful.createClient({
  space: 'your_space_id',
  accessToken: 'your_access_token'
});

client.getEntries()
  .then((response) => console.log(response.items))
  .catch(console.error);

Fetching a Single Entry

This feature allows you to fetch a single entry by its ID. The code sample shows how to create a client and fetch a specific entry.

const contentful = require('contentful');
const client = contentful.createClient({
  space: 'your_space_id',
  accessToken: 'your_access_token'
});

client.getEntry('entry_id')
  .then((entry) => console.log(entry))
  .catch(console.error);

Fetching Assets

This feature allows you to fetch assets from your Contentful space. The code sample demonstrates how to create a client and fetch all assets.

const contentful = require('contentful');
const client = contentful.createClient({
  space: 'your_space_id',
  accessToken: 'your_access_token'
});

client.getAssets()
  .then((response) => console.log(response.items))
  .catch(console.error);

Content Management

This feature allows you to manage content, such as creating new entries. The code sample shows how to create a client and create a new entry in a specific content type.

const contentfulManagement = require('contentful-management');
const client = contentfulManagement.createClient({
  accessToken: 'your_management_access_token'
});

client.getSpace('your_space_id')
  .then((space) => space.createEntry('content_type_id', {
    fields: {
      title: {
        'en-US': 'Hello, World!'
      }
    }
  }))
  .then((entry) => console.log(entry))
  .catch(console.error);

Other packages similar to contentful

prismic-javascript

Prismic is a headless CMS similar to Contentful. The prismic-javascript package allows you to query content from Prismic's API. It offers similar functionalities such as fetching entries and assets, but with a different API structure and query language.

strapi-sdk-javascript

Strapi is an open-source headless CMS that provides a JavaScript SDK for interacting with its API. The strapi-sdk-javascript package allows you to fetch and manage content, similar to Contentful, but with the added benefit of being open-source and self-hosted.

README

contentful.js

JavaScript SDK for Contentful's Content Delivery API.

Contentful is a content management platform for web applications, mobile apps and connected devices. It allows you to create, edit & manage content in the cloud and publish it anywhere via a powerful API. Contentful offers tools for managing editorial teams and enabling cooperation between organizations.

Features

• Content retrieval through Contentful's Content Delivery API.
• Synchronization
• Localization support
• Link resolution
• Built in rate limiting with recovery procedures

Browsers and Node.js:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Edge
• IE11 (with legacy version of the library)
• Safari
• node.js (4.x, 6.x)

Other browsers should also work, but at the moment we're only running automated tests on the browsers and Node.js versions specified above.

Getting started

In order to get started with the Contentful JS SDK you'll need not only to install it, but also to get credentials which will allow you to have access to your content in Contentful.

• Installation
• Authentication
• Using ES6 import
• Your first request
• Using this SDK with the Preview API
• Advanced features
• Troubleshooting
• Documentation/References

Installation

Node:

Using npm:

npm install contentful

Using yarn:

yarn add contentful

Browser:

For browsers, we recommend to download the SDK via npm or yarn to ensure 100% availability.

If you'd like to use a standalone built file you can use the following script tag or download it from unpkg, under the dist directory:

<!-- Avoid using the following url for production. You can not rely on its availability. -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/contentful@latest/dist/contentful.browser.min.js"></script>

It's not recommended to use the above URL for production.

Using contentful@latest will always get you the latest version, but you can also specify a specific version number:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/contentful@5.0.1/dist/contentful.browser.min.js"></script>

The Contentful Delivery SDK will be accessible via the contentful global variable.

Check the releases page to know which versions are available.

Legacy browsers:

This library also comes with a legacy version to support Internet Explorer 11 and other older browsers. It already contains a polyfill for Promises.

To support legacy browsers in your application, use contentful.legacy.min.js instead of contentful.browser.min.js

Authentication

To get content from Contentful, an app should authenticate with an OAuth bearer token.

You can create API keys using Contentful's web interface. Go to the app, open the space that you want to access (top left corner lists all the spaces), and navigate to the APIs area. Open the API Keys section and create your first token. Done.

Don't forget to also get your Space ID.

For more information, check the Contentful's REST API reference on Authentication.

Using ES6 import

You can use the es6 import with the SDK as follow

// import createClient directly
import {createClient} from 'contentful'
const client = createClient({
  // This is the space ID. A space is like a project folder in Contentful terms
  space: 'developer_bookshelf',
  // This is the access token for this space. Normally you get both ID and the token in the Contentful web app
  accessToken: '0b7f6x59a0'
})
//....

OR

// import everything from contentful
import * as contentful from 'contentful'
const client = contentful.createClient({
  // This is the space ID. A space is like a project folder in Contentful terms
  space: 'developer_bookshelf',
  // This is the access token for this space. Normally you get both ID and the token in the Contentful web app
  accessToken: '0b7f6x59a0'
})
// ....

Your first request

The following code snippet is the most basic one you can use to get some content from Contentful with this SDK:

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  // This is the space ID. A space is like a project folder in Contentful terms
  space: 'developer_bookshelf',
  // This is the access token for this space. Normally you get both ID and the token in the Contentful web app
  accessToken: '0b7f6x59a0'
})
// This API call will request an entry with the specified ID from the space defined at the top, using a space-specific access token.
client.getEntry('5PeGS2SoZGSa4GuiQsigQu')
.then((entry) => console.log(entry))

You can try and change the above example at Tonic, or if you'd prefer a more Browser oriented example, check out this JSFiddle version of our Product Catalogue demo app.

Using this SDK with the Preview API

This SDK can also be used with the Preview API. In order to do so, you need to use the Preview API Access token, available on the same page where you get the Delivery API token, and specify the host of the preview API, such as:

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  space: 'developer_bookshelf',
  accessToken: 'preview_0b7f6x59a0',
  host: 'preview.contentful.com'
})

You can check other options for the client on our reference documentation

Advanced features

Link resolution

contentful.js does resolve links by default unless specified otherwise. To disable it just set resolveLinks to false when creating the Contentful client. Like so

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  accessToken:'<you-access-token>',
  space: '<your-space-id>',
  resolveLinks: false
})

Please note that the link resolution is only possible when requesting records from the collection endpoint using client.getEntries() or by performing an initial sync client.sync({initial: true}). In case you want to request one entry and benefit from the link resolution you can use the collection end point with the following query parameter 'sys.id': '<your-entry-id>'.

e.g. assuming that you have a Content Type post that has a reference field author

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  accessToken:'<you-access-token>',
  space: '<your-space-id>',
})
// getting a specific Post
client.getEntries({'sys.id': '<entry-id>'}).then((response) => {
  // output the author name
  console.log(response.items[0].fields.author.fields.name)
})

The link resolution is applied to one level deep by default. If you need it to be applied deeper, you may specify the include parameter when fetching your entries as follows client.getEntries({include: <value>}). The include parameter can be set to a number up to 10..

Sync

The Sync API allows you to keep a local copy of all content in a space up-to-date via delta updates, meaning only changes that occurred since last sync call. Whenever you perform a sync operation the endpoint will send back a syncToken which you can use in a subsequent sync to only retrieve data which changed since the last call. e.g.

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  accessToken:'<you-access-token>',
  space: '<your-space-id>',
})
// first time you are syncing make sure to spcify `initial: true`
client.sync({initial: true}).then((response) => {
  // You should save the `nextSyncToken` to use in the following sync
  console.log(response.nextSyncToken)
})

The SDK will go through all the pages for you and gives you back a response object with the full data so you don't need to handle pagination.

Querying & Search parameters

You can pass your query parameters as key: value pairs in the query object whenever request a resource. e.g.

const contentful = require('contentful')
const client = contentful.createClient({
  accessToken:'<you-access-token>',
  space: '<your-space-id>',
})

// getting a specific Post
client.getEntries({'sys.id': '<entry-id>'}).then((response) => {
  // output the author name
  console.log(response.items[0].fields.author.fields.name)
})

// You can pass a query when requesting a single entity
client.getEntry('<entry-id>', {key: value})

for more information about the search parameters check the documentation

Troubleshooting

• Can I use the SDK in react native projects
  • Yes it is possible
• I get the error: Unable to resolve module http
  • Our SDK is supplied as node and browser version. Most non-node environments, like React Native, act like a browser. To force using of the browser version, you can require it via: const { createClient } = require('contentful/dist/contentful.browser.min.js')
• Link resolution does not work when using client.getEntry('<entry-id>')
  • Link resolution does not work with the single entity endpoint, you can use client.getEntries({'sys.id': '<entry-id>'}) to link an entry with resolved links
• Can I use it with typescript?
  • Yes, there is also a type definition file
• Is the SDK doing any caching?
  • No, check this issue for more infos
• 😱 Something is wrong what should I do?
  • If it is a bug related to the code create a Github issue and make sure to remove any credential for your code before sharing it.
  • If you need to share your credentials, for example you have an issue with your space, please create a support ticket in the support page.

Documentation/References

To help you get the most out of this SDK, we've prepared reference documentation, tutorials and other examples that will help you learn and understand how to use this library.

Configuration

The createClient method supports several options you may set to achieve the expected behavior:

contentful.createClient({
  ... your config here ...
})

accessToken (required)

Your CDA access token.

space (required)

Your Space ID.

host (default: 'cdn.contentful.com')

Set the host used to build the request URI's.

basePath (default: ``)

This path gets appended to the host to allow request urls like https://gateway.example.com/contentful/ for custom gateways/proxies.

httpAgent (default: undefined)

Custom agent to perform HTTP requests. Find further information in the axios request config documentation.

httpsAgent (default: undefined)

Custom agent to perform HTTPS requests. Find further information in the axios request config documentation.

headers (default: {})

Additional headers to attach to the requests. We add/overwrite the following headers:

• Content-Type: application/vnd.contentful.management.v1+json
• X-Contentful-User-Agent: sdk contentful.js/1.2.3; platform node.js/1.2.3; os macOS/1.2.3 (Automatically generated)

proxy (default: undefined)

Axios proxy configuration. See the axios request config documentation for further information about the supported values.

resolveLinks (default: true)

Turn off to disable link resolving.

retryOnError (default: true)

By default, this SDK is retrying requests which resulted in a 500 server error and 429 rate limit response. Set this to false to disable this behavior.

logHandler (default: function (level, data) {})

Errors and warnings will be logged by default to the node or browser console. Pass your own log handler to intercept here and handle errors, warnings and info on your own.

Reference documentation

The Contentful's JS SDK reference documents what objects and methods are exposed by this library, what arguments they expect and what kind of data is returned.

Most methods also have examples which show you how to use them.

You can start by looking at the top level contentful namespace.

From version 3.0.0 onwards, you can access documentation for a specific version by visiting `https://contentful.github.io/contentful.js/contentful/<VERSION>`

Contentful JavaScript resources

Check the Contentful for JavaScript page for Tutorials, Demo Apps, and more information on other ways of using JavaScript with Contentful

REST API reference

This library is a wrapper around our Contentful Delivery REST API. Some more specific details such as search parameters and pagination are better explained on the REST API reference, and you can also get a better understanding of how the requests look under the hood.

Legacy contentful.js

For versions prior to 3.0.0, you can access documentation at https://github.com/contentful/contentful.js/tree/legacy

Versioning

This project strictly follows Semantic Versioning by use of semantic-release.

This means that new versions are released automatically as fixes, features or breaking changes are released.

You can check the changelog on the releases page.

Migration from contentful.js 4.x

The bundle for browsers is now called contentful.browser.min.js to mark it clearly as browser only bundle. If you need to support IE 11 or other old browsers, you may use the contentful.legacy.min.js. Node will automatically use the contentful.node.min.js while bundlers like Webpack will resolve to the new ES-modules version of the library.

No changes to the API of the library were made.

Migration from contentful.js 3.x

From version 4.0.0 and up contentful.js is exported as a single umd bundle the cdn distribution has changed, there is no more browser-dist. the new link format is https://unpkg.com/contentful@version/dist/contentful.min.js instead of https://unpkg.com/contentful@version/browser-dist/contentful.min.js. to access version 3 you can still use https://unpkg.com/contentful@3.0.0/browser-dist/contentful.min.js

Migration from contentful.js 2.x and older

contentful.js 3.x was a major rewrite, with some API changes. While the base functionality remains the same, some method names have changed, as well as some internal behaviors.

See the migration guide for more information.

Support

If you have a problem with this library, please file an issue here on GitHub.

If you have other problems with Contentful not related to this library, you can contact Customer Support.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

License

MIT