This example showcases Next.js’s Static Generation feature using Contentful as the data source.
Using the Deploy Button below, you’ll deploy the Next.js project as well as connect it to your Contentful space using the Vercel Contentful Integration.
Execute create-next-app
with npm, Yarn, or pnpm to bootstrap the example:
npx create-next-app --example cms-contentful cms-contentful-app
yarn create next-app --example cms-contentful cms-contentful-app
pnpm create next-app --example cms-contentful cms-contentful-app
First, create an account on Contentful.
After creating an account, create a new empty space from the dashboard and assign to it any name of your liking.
The content model defines the data structures of your application/websites. The structures are flexible and you can tailor them to your needs.
For this example you need to create a content model that defines an author and a post content type. You can create these two by running a script or by doing it manually to familiarize yourself with the Contentful user interface.
This project includes a setup script which you can use to set up the content model expected by the source code.
In your Contentful dashboard go to Settings > General Settings and copy the Space ID.
Next, go to Settings > API > Content management tokens and create a new token by clicking Generate personal token. This token has the same access rights as the logged in user. Do not share it publicly, you will only use it to set up your space and can delete it afterwards.
With the space ID and management access token at hand run the following command:
npx cross-env CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID=YOUR_SPACE_ID CONTENTFUL_MANAGEMENT_TOKEN=XXX npm run setup
This command will create the needed content structures and set up your Contentful space ready to use. The output should look as follows:
> cms-contentful@1.0.0 setup /Users/stefan.judis/Projects/next.js/examples/cms-contentful
> node ./contentful/setup.js $CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID $CONTENTFUL_MANAGEMENT_TOKEN
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ The following entities are going to be imported: │
├─────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┤
│ Content Types │ 2 │
├─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Editor Interfaces │ 2 │
├─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Locales │ 1 │
├─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Webhooks │ 0 │
├─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Entries │ 0 │
├─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Assets │ 0 │
└─────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┘
✔ Validating content-file
✔ Initialize client (1s)
✔ Checking if destination space already has any content and retrieving it (2s)
✔ Apply transformations to source data (1s)
✔ Push content to destination space
✔ Connecting to space (1s)
...
...
...
Author
content typeFrom your contentful space, go to Content model and add a new content type:
Author
, the Api Identifier should be author
Once the content model is saved, add these fields (you don’t have to modify the settings unless specified):
name
- Text field (type short text). Field ID should be set to name
picture
- Media field (type one file). Field ID should be set to picture
Save the content type and continue.
post
typeFrom your contentful space, go to Content model and add another content type:
Post
, the Api Identifier should be post
Next, add these fields (you don’t have to modify the settings unless specified):
title
- Text field (type short text)content
- Rich text fieldexcerpt
- Text field (type Long text, full-text search)coverImage
- Media field (type one file)date
- Date and time fieldslug
- Text field. You can optionally go to the settings of this field, and under Appearance, select Slug to display it as a slug of the title
field.author
- Reference field (type one reference)Save the content type and continue.
After setting up the content model (either manually or by running npm run setup
or yarn setup
), it should look as follows.
Content model overview
Go to the Content section in your space, then click on Add entry and select the Author content type:
Next, create another entry with the content type Post:
Important: For each entry and asset, you need to click on Publish. If not, the entry will be in draft state.
From your contentful space, go to Settings > API keys. There will be an example Content delivery / preview token - you can use these API keys. (You may also create a new key.)
Next, copy the .env.local.example
file in this directory to .env.local
(which will be ignored by Git):
cp .env.local.example .env.local
Then set each variable on .env.local
:
CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID
should be the Space ID field of your API KeyCONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN
should be the Content Delivery API - access token field of your API keyCONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_ACCESS_TOKEN
should be the Content Preview API - access token field of your API keyCONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_SECRET
should be any value you want. It must be URL friendly as the dashboard will send it as a query parameter to enable preview modeCONTENTFUL_REVALIDATE_SECRET
should be any value you want. This will be the value you pass in as a secret header from the Contentful Webhook settings to use On-Demand RevalidationYour .env.local
file should look like this:
CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID=...
CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN=...
CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_ACCESS_TOKEN=...
CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_SECRET=...
CONTENTFUL_REVALIDATE_SECRET=...
npm install
npm run dev
# or
yarn install
yarn dev
Your blog should be up and running on http://localhost:3000! If it doesn’t work, post on GitHub discussions.
In your Contentful space, go to Settings > Content preview and add a new content preview for development.
The Name field may be anything, like Development
. Then, under Content preview URLs, check Post and set its value to:
http://localhost:3000/api/preview?secret=<CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_SECRET>&slug={entry.fields.slug}
Replace <CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_SECRET>
with its respective value in .env.local
.
Once saved, go to one of the posts you’ve created and:
[Draft]
in front of the title.You will now be able to see the updated title. To exit preview mode, you can click on Click here to exit preview mode at the top of the page.
You can deploy this app to the cloud with Vercel (Documentation).
To deploy your local project to Vercel, push it to GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket and import to Vercel.
Important: When you import your project on Vercel, make sure to click on Environment Variables and set them to match your .env.local
file.
Alternatively, you can deploy using our template by clicking on the Deploy button below.
This will deploy the Next.js project as well as connect it to your Contentful space using the Vercel Contentful Integration. If you are using Preview Mode, make sure to add CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_SECRET
as an Environment Variable as well.
In your Contentful space, go to Settings > Webhooks and add a new webhook:
Specify the POST URL: Using the URL from your Vercel deployment in step 8, add the path /api/revalidate
at the end, so it would look something like:
https://<YOUR_VERCEL_DEPLOYMENT_URL>/api/revalidate
Replace <YOUR_VERCEL_DEPLOYMENT_URL>
with your own deployment URL as noted in the Vercel dashboard.
Specify Triggers: You can choose to trigger for all events or specific events only, such as the Publishing and Unpublishing of Entries and Assets, as shown below.
Specify Secret Header: Add a secret header named x-vercel-reval-key
and enter the value of the
CONTENTFUL_REVALIDATE_SECRET
from before.
Set Content type: Set content type to application/json
in the dropdown.
Edit post: Now, try editing the title of one of your blog posts in Contentful and click Publish. You should see the changed reflected in the website you just deployed, all without triggering a build! Behind the scenes a call was made to the revalidate api that triggers a revalidation of both the landing page and the specific post that was changed.
Verify: You can verify if your request was made successfully by checking the webhook request log on Contentful and checking for a successful 200 status code, or by having your functions tab open on Vercel when committing the change (log drains may also be used). If you are experiencing issues with the api call, ensure you have correctly entered in the value for environment variable CONTENTFUL_REVALIDATE_SECRET
within your Vercel deployment.