create-contentful-content

An easier way to programmatically create nested contentful content

Installation

• With npm

  npm i(install) create-contentful-content

• With yarn

  yarn add create-contentful-content

Basic Usage

import { createContentfulContent } from 'create-content-client';
import data from './data.json';

const { SPACE, TOKEN, ENVIRONMENT } = process.env;

const templates = {
  article: {...},
  author: {...}
};

const createContent = async () => {
  const { createEntry } = await createContentfulContent({
    spaceID: SPACE,
    accessToken: TOKEN,
    environment: ENVIRONMENT,
    templates,
  });

  const articles = await Promise.all(data.map(item => createEntry('article', item)));
}

Templates

create-contentful-content relies on the templates argument to determine how to go about creating a specific type of entry. templates should be an object with fields that relate to each content type that will need to be created by the script. In the example above the two fields provided are article and author, meaning that the initialized createEntry will know how to handle these two content types. The example calls createEntry('article', item), so it will use the contents of item to create an article entry in Contentful based off the article value in the template.

The value of a specific template should be another object with all of the fields needed to create that entry in Contentful. Each field can either be a string or a function. A string will simply be used as a property-accessor for the object passed to create entry. A function will be given the object passed to createEntry along with the resolution methods created by createContentfulContent.

This is probably more easily understand by example. Below is an example of what the templates might looks like for the example above, creating a simple blog site.

/data.json

[
  {
    "title": "The blog post title",
    "body": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.",
    "publishDate": "1969-12-31",
    "heroImage": "https://via.placeholder.com/1500/500",
    "author": {
      "name": "John Doe",
      "headshot": "https://via.placeholder.com/500",
      "title": "Chief Person"
    }
  },
  {
    "title": "Another blog post title",
    "body": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.",
    "publishDate": "1969-12-31",
    "heroImage": "https://via.placeholder.com/1500/500",
    "author": {
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "headshot": "https://via.placeholder.com/500",
      "title": "Co-Chief Person"
    }
  },
  {
    "title": "A third blog post title",
    "body": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.",
    "publishDate": "1969-12-31",
    "heroImage": "https://via.placeholder.com/1500/500",
    "author": {
      "name": "Third Name",
      "headshot": "https://via.placeholder.com/500",
      "title": "EVP Person"
    }
  }
]

const templates = {
  article: {
    title: 'title',
    body: 'body',
    publishDate: 'publishDate',
    heroImage(article, { createAsset }) {
      return createAsset({
        url: article.heroImage,
        title: `${article.title} Hero Image`,
        type: 'image/png',
      })
    },
    author(article, { createEntry }) {
      return createEntry('author', article.author);
    }
  },
  author: {
    name: 'name',
    headshot(author, { createAsset }) {
      return createAsset({
        url: author.headshot,
        title: `${author.name} Headshot`,
        type: 'image/png'
      })
    },
    title: 'title'
  }
};

Given these templates and data, the example above will start at the first item in the data array and try to create an article content type from this object. Following the order of the fields provided in the article template, it will first look at the title field, which corresponds directly with the title field from the data object ('The blog post title'). Next, it looks at body and publishDate which behave the same way with a direct relationship to the data object.

It then gets to the heroImage field which is a function. This function is passed the whole article object as the first argument and an object of methods as the second argument, specifically createAsset. createAsset takes specific arguments which are described below, but this will create an "Asset" in Contentful and return the necessary structure to link it to the article that is being created.

Finally, it gets to the author field which is another function. This time the function uses the createEntry method instead of createAsset. createEntry here is exactly the same as the top-level createEntry used to create the article. In this case, we're telling it to create an author and passing it the author data that's inside the article object.

Now it looks at the author template. Equivalently, it looks at the individual fields. name and title correspond directly to the fields within the author object. headshot is used to create an asset, similarly to the heroImage in the article. The whole createEntry function will return the necesssary structure to link the newly-created author to the article being created, equilavent to createAsset.

API Docs

• createContentfulContent({ accessToken, spaceID, environment, templates, dryRun, publish})
  • accessToken (required) - A Contentful Management Token which can be created in the Contentful dashboard.
  • spaceID (required) - The ID of the Contentful space where the content should be created. This can also be found in the contentful dashboard.
  • environment (optional, defaults to master) - The Contentful environment where the content should be created
  • templates (required) - The entry templates as described in the section above.
  • dryRun (optional, default to false) - If this is set to true content will not be created and instead the complete structure of the content to be created will be returned.
  • publish (optional, defaults to the opposite value of dryRun) - If set to false, content will be created in the "Draft" state. If set to true the content will be "Published" after creation.
• createEntry(contentType,data)
  • contentType - Corresponds to a field from templates. Specifies which type of entry to create.
  • data - The data object used to create the entry.
• createAsset({ url, name, type })
  • url - The asset URL.
  • name - Used to populate the name of the asset in contentful.
  • type - The mime type of the file (e.g. image/png, image/jpeg, video/mp4).