Contentfully

A simple but fast API client for Contentful that lets developers focus on data instead of Contentful metadata and REST structure.

Table of Contents

1. Features
2. Installation
3. Prerequisites
4. Basic Ussage
5. Migration Guide

Features

• Transforms Contentful responses into simple / flat JavaScript objects.
• Stripping of metadata, retaining the basics that you need (e.g. ID, contentType, and fields).
• Recursive folding of linked entries and assets without cloning (i.e. an Entry / Asset that is reference multiple times is only created once).
• Supports custom transforms of assets URLs to allow caching or rewrites.
• Supports full Content Delivery API, including custom environments and preview servers.
• Typescript 5 support.
• React Native support.

Installation

Current stable release (3.x)

$ npm i -s contentfully

Prerequisites

You'll need the Space ID and API key for the space that you wish to access. You can get these by doing the following after logging into the Contentful Web App:

1. Navigate to your Organization / Space (usually from the upper-left space selector in the top toolbar).
2. Select Settings → General Settings to find your Space ID.
3. Select Settings → API keys to see your generated API keys (you will need to have the correct permissions on the space to do this). Create a new API key if you need to.

Basic Usage

Contentfully takes the same parameters as the Contentful client (CreateClientParams). The following are the most used parameters:

Option	Type	Required?	Default
accessToken	string	YES
space	string	YES
environment	string	NO	master
host	string	NO	cdn.contentful.com

Create an instance of Contentfully:

import {Contentfully} from 'contentfully'

// create a Contentfully instance
const contentfully = new Contentfully({
  accessToken: 'YOUR_API_KEY',
  space: 'YOUR_SPACE_ID'
})

Next, we can now query Contentful using Contenfully's getEntries() method. The first argument to getEntries() is a query object that takes the same query parameters as a direct Content Delivery API call.

// get the 3rd page of my model objects
// can also pass in optional type for the models getting fetched
const data = await contentfully.getEntries<MyModel>({
    content_type: 'myModel',
    skip: 20,
    limit: 10
})

// print the result
console.log(data)

Contentfully will execute the query, recursively linking any assets or embedded content models, returning a basic JavaScript object without the Contentful metadata that you don't need.

It should look something like this:

{
    total: 10,
    skip: 20,
    limit: 10,
    items: [
        {
            _id: "5nZHNlP6zCESgGuMGKG2Q8",
            _type: "myModel",
            field1: "value1",
            field2: "value2",
            field3: false,
            field5: {
                _id: "m972ick1jqhi",
                _type: "myModelDependency",
                field1: "foo",
                field2: "bar",
                field3: true,
            },
            field6: [
                1, 4, 10, 20
            ]
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Localization

Just as with the Content Delivery API, you can query entries to retrieve a single locale or all localized versions of an entry.

// single entry with specific locale
const modelWithAllLocales = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', {locale: 'en-US'})

// mutliple entries with specific locale
const modelsWithAllLocales = await contentfully.getEntries({
    content_type: 'myModel',
    skip: 20,
    limit: 10,
    locale: 'en-US'
})

// single entry with all locales
const modelWithAllLocales = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', {allLocales: true})

// mutliple entries with all locales
const modelsWithAllLocales = await contentfully.getEntries({
    content_type: 'myModel',
    skip: 20,
    limit: 10
}, {allLocales: true})

By default locales will be lifted to top level objects so each locale can be used holistically. Please refer to the example response below. The default locale from the space will be used to for values not defined in any locale. Fallback locales are implemented for lifted responses following Contentful's "Considerations on fallback locales" documentation. Flattening can be disabled for a query by passing the {flatten: false}

// disable locale flattening for single entry
await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', {allLocales: true, flatten: false})

// disable locale flattening for multiple locales
await contentfully.getEntries({query}, {allLocales: true, flatten: false})

Example output with (from getEntries) flattened locales:

{
    total: 10,
    skip: 20,
    limit: 10,
    items: {
      "en-CA": [
        {
          _id: "5nZHNlP6zCESgGuMGKG2Q8",
          _type: "myModel",
          field1: "Hello",
          field2: "",
          field3: "foo",
          field4: true,
          field5: {
              _id: "m972ick1jqhi",
              _type: "myModelDependency",
              field1: "foo",
              field2: "bar",
              field3: true
          },
          field6: [1, 4, 10, 20],
          image: {
            _id: "m12mkd123fdr4",
            url: "foo.png",
            title: "title",
            dimensions: {
              width: 1,
              height: 1
            },
            size: 44335
          }
        }
      ],
      "fr-CA": [
        {
          _id: "5nZHNlP6zCESgGuMGKG2Q8",
          _type: "myModel",
          field1: "Bonjour",
          field2: "Comment vas-tu",
          field3: "foo",
          field3: false,
          field5: {
              _id: "m972ick1jqhi",
              _type: "myModelDependency",
              field1: "foo",
              field2: "bar",
              field3: true
          },
          field6: [2, 8, 20, 40],
          image: {
            _id: "m12mkd123fdr4",
            url: "bar.jpg",
            title: "french title",
            dimensions: {
              width: 2,
              height: 2
            },
            size: 123124
          }
        }
      ]
    }
}

Migration Guide

This guide goes over migrating from v2.x to v3.x.

Initializing

Initializing Contentfully in v2.x was:

// create the contentful client
const contentfulClient = new ContentfulClient({

  // credentials for the space
  accessToken: "YOUR_API_KEY",
  spaceId:     "YOUR_SPACE_ID",

  // setup a handler to auto-retry when a rate-limit error occurs
  onRateLimitError: ExponentialBackoffHandler.create()
});

// create a Contentfully instance
const contentfully = new Contentfully(contentfulClient);

In v3.x settings are passed directly

[!NOTE] Also note that keys no longer have Id. For example spaceId is now space.

// Contentful settings passed directly into contentfully
const contentfully = new Contentfully({
  accessToken: "YOUR_API_KEY",
  space: "YOUR_SPACE_ID"
})

onRateLimitError is no longer supported however by default, on error, the request is tried again up to 5 times. This behaviour can be changed by passing in options retryOnError and retryLimit.

In v3.x experimental behaviour is now the default behaviour.

Localization

Get single locale for entry:

// v2.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', 'en-US')

// v3.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', {locale: 'en-US'})

Get all locales for entry:

// v2.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', '*')

// v3.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntry('myModel_id', {allLocales: true})

Get all locales for entries:

// v2.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntries({locale: '*'})

// v3.x
const model = await contentfully.getEntries({query}, {allLocales: true})