Managing your blog content can be made easier for you and your clients by utilizing a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is software that allows you to create and manage your digital content easily with or without technical knowledge.
In this article, you'll learn how to build a fully functional blog application with React and Hygraph CMS.
What is Hygraph?
Hygraph is a federated content platform that utilises GraphQL for content APIs making it easier to distribute you content. Later on in the article you'll get to see how Hygraph makes it easy to create content schemas and access all this through a GraphQL API.
Prerequisites to follow along:
Intermediate knowledge of React;
An IDE, preferably VS code;
A browser such as Chrome;
Getting Started with Hygraph
Begin with creating an account with Hygraph. Proceed to create a project, choose the name, description and data storage region.
This will usher you into this page.
On the left side menu, click schema so as to fill in your content model. Next to the models option. Click on the add option and proceed to fill out details of your blog post.
Now that you are done with this. Hygraph ushers you into the fields option that allows you to add all the details of your blog itself.
Once you have filled out your content head over to the project settings section on the left side of the screen. Here you can access the APIs that you'll use to fetch data to your React app.
To view the generated GraphQL queries, click the API Playground section.
Now it's time to create the React app. Implement this by running npx create react app in your VS code terminal.
Once that is done, It's time to fetch this data. Create a components folder in your React app and create a Blogcard.js file. Use this code:
Please note that the names of my projects happen to differ as the below code is for the project I had built earlier with Hygraph
import "./Blogcardstyles.css";
import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import { Link } from "react-router-dom";
import image1 from "../assets/claudio-testa--SO3JtE3gZo-unsplash.jpg";
import image2 from "../assets/tomoko-uji-eriuKJwcdjI-unsplash.jpg";
import image3 from "../assets/henry-be-IicyiaPYGGI-unsplash.jpg";
import { request } from 'graphql-request';
const Blogcard = () => {
const [blogs, setBlogs] = useState([]);
useEffect(() => {
const fetchBlogs = async () => {
const { blogappsmwendwa } = await request(
`your api key goes here`
{
blogappsmwendwa {
hereWeGoWithTheBlogapp
loremIpsumLoremIpsum
}
}`
);
setBlogs(blogappsmwendwa);
};
fetchBlogs();
}, []);
return (
<div className="work-container">
<h1 className="project-heading">All Blogs</h1>
<div className="project-container">
<div className="project-card">
<img src={image1} alt="nature" />
<h2 className="project-title">Content fetched from Hygraph CMS</h2>
<div className="pro-details">
{blogs.map((blogapp) => (
<p>{blogapp.hereWeGoWithTheBlogapp}</p>
))}
<div>
<Link to="/Page" className="btn">Read More</Link>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div className="project-card">
<img src={image2} alt="nature" />
<h2 className="project-title">Content fetched from Hygraph CMS</h2>
<div className="pro-details">
{blogs.map((blogapp) => (
<p>{blogapp.hereWeGoWithTheBlogapp}</p>
))}
<div>
<Link to="/Page" className="btn">Read More</Link>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div className="project-card">
<img src={image3} alt="nature" />
<h2 className="project-title">Content fetched from Hygraph CMS</h2>
<div className="pro-details">
{blogs.map((blogapp) => (
<p>{blogapp.hereWeGoWithTheBlogapp}</p>
))}
<div>
<Link to="/Page" className="btn">Read More</Link>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
)
};
export default Blogcard;
In BlogCard.js, you were able to make a GraphQL request that fetches your blog content from the Hygraph Schema.
You were then able to use map()method to determine where each part of the data goes.
You can now refresh your page to view all the data stored in your Hygraph schema right into your React application.
The read more buttons redirect to a new page that displays further data from the schema you created earlier. To view the full blog application, check my Github Repo for the code.
Conclusion
Through this article you have learnt what is a CMS, its benefits and how to create a blog application with content fetched from Hygraph which is a federated content platform.
Top comments (3)
Hygraph is pretty cool, I've started using it as well. I only wish their paid plans would be cheaper or more scaleable like firebase. For small things like blogs/portfolio's its great though. Love their playground and querying options, its really graphql+
Hygraph is a game changer. I love it too, especially the remote source option for integrating APIs
I utilized Hygraph for my multilingual website, but I found the internationalization of entries and assets to be unsatisfactory. Additionally, I wasn't pleased with the inability to have a single entry view alongside the table view. However, apart from these aspects, the interface is sleek and user-friendly.