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Sasidharan
Sasidharan

Posted on • Edited on

Developing Backend Made Easy!

Are you thinking of creating a content providing backend for your project?

πŸ§‘β€πŸ’» : Yes!

Gonna do it for yourself from scratch?

πŸ§‘β€πŸ’» : Yes. Planned to do so.

Before that let me suggest a guy, strapi.

Strapi is the leading open-source headless CMS. It’s 100% Javascript, fully customizable, and developer-first.

What actually a headless content management system means?

Its a perfectly separated backend application developed from scratch for content delivery through REST APIs. Simply, it is a content repository that comes with an admin panel to add content and it can be displayed in frontend over RESTful APIs.

Why we need headless CMS?

  • Web and mobile applications can be served with your content.
  • Build any website using your familiar technology.
  • Use REST APIs to communicate with your content.
  • Create your content with a pre-built user interface.
  • Now, most of the CMS supports GraphQL queries which can be used to queries your data from Frontend applications such as React, Vue, Angular, etc.

Why Strapi?

  • Open source and free forever.
  • Easy to create, update, and manage content.
  • Supports GraphQL.
  • Select the database of your choice (SQLite, MySql, Postgres, MongoDB).
  • Easy one-click deployment.

Sounds easy right?

πŸ§‘β€πŸ’» : Yep! But how to do that?


Step 1

Package manager of your choice. I am using yarn in this example.

yarn create strapi-app my-project --quickstart
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Note: Here, --quickstart flag will create a strapi-app with SQLite database. You can skip the flag if you need to change a specific database.

While creating a project it will expose you to admin panel, else navigate to http://localhost:1337/admin

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  • Complete the form to create the first Administrator user.
  • Click Ready to start.

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Step 2

That's it. You have created your own backend Node application in minutes.

Now, create your new collection/table in the Content-types builder tab,

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with all your required columns/fields.

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Step 3

After creating content type with its required fields, the created one will be shown in the sidebar under collections, select and add your content as,

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Save it.

Step 4

Navigate to Roles & Permissions -> Public, you can see your APIs created.

Boom!!!

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To view it in browser, make it public.

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You can also add authentication to your APIs, allow public access, and so on.

Now we have created our headless CMS in just a few steps. You can simply use this REST API in your frontend mobile, web application using HTTP client or GraphQL queries.

Refer Strapi Official Documentation for more - https://strapi.io/documentation/v3.x/getting-started/introduction.html

I created a site called lagandlog using strapi have a look.
Thanks.

Top comments (10)

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thisdotmedia_staff profile image
This Dot Media

Thanks for sharing! πŸ™

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

I still don't get why would I need it, why not just writing a schema directly in a JavaScript file. But then, REST API might not be standardized.

In reality, I used to write my own CMS, but now I go flat file.

My opinion is, I don't really want to design a schema, but headless CMS does allows flexibility of the frontend side, but freedom can also be a burden.

Also, does headless CMS need a GUI? Will the GUI be done right, or will it have learning curve as well? (Who said only coding has learning curve? GUI also has learning curve...)

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webdev_chen profile image
Uchena Miller

If it's a personal project a developer should take their time building their back-end and front-end.. for work if the client doesn't have a good enough budget then what the heck!. Go for it

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

In my experience, self brew projects always have maintenance costs. Still, it is good for learning.

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sasicodes profile image
Sasidharan

Exactly.

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spidergears profile image
Deepak Singh

Is there a standard plugin to manage data migration and schema? I couldn't find any and that's stopping me from using this in production.

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adeolaonads profile image
adeolaonads

Thanks for sharing

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aadish2020 profile image
Aadish Patodi

It's like a lite version of jhipster

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therohitdas profile image
Rohit Das

I like Strapi but, I am currently using webiny

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sasicodes profile image
Sasidharan

How's your experience on webiny?