Exploring Strapi, a Node.js headless CMS. https://strapi.io
Once the repo has been checked out, change directories to the root of the project. Build the required dependencies (node_modules) by running:
$ yarn
from the command line (ensuring this is called from the root of the project).
Once this is complete, you can spin up the project for development by running:
$ yarn develop
To spin it up as prod, run:
$ yarn start
The demo admin user is:
- login:
admin - password:
unsafe_demo
The demo front end user is:
- login:
FirstUser - password:
unsafe_demo
From a development point of view there wasn't much at all to get this running. Initialize a new project using *NOTE: To use a different database, the --quickstart flag should not be used. Please see "Database" below:
& yarn create strapi-app {PROJECT_NAME} --quickstart
and you get a user interface in localhost. From there, you create an initial admin user (and a front-end user if you like).
As the admin user, you may begin setting up content types and groups via the interface.
The interface is pretty clean and seems to allow for a nice bit of content complexity without having an overly complex UI.
Creating content types via the UI generates files in the api folder. Each content type has files within a folder with the name of the content type. For example, in this repo, a content type called "restaurant" was created. Thus, there is a corresponding folder within api called restaurant. Within the content type folder, there are folders for config, controllers, models, and services.
Creating groups via the UI generates files in the groups folder. Each group has a json file named for the corresponding group. For example, in this repo, a group called "hours_of_operation" was created. Thus, there is a corresponding json file within groups called hours_of_operation.json.
An image was uploaded when populating a restaurant content type during the creation of this project. The image was uploaded to the public folder in a child folder called uploads. Files may be uploaded to external locations as well. Please see the Strapi Uploads Documentation
See file structure
Once content is created and permissions defined for the fields in the content, it is immediately available via REST requests.
See the Strapi GraphQL Documentation
To implement a GraphQL API, run:
$ yarn strapi install graphql
By default, the application uses SQLite. To use a different database, do not add the --quickstart flag to the initialization command.
See the Strapi Database Documentation and the Strapi Database Configuration Documentation
The easiest way to spin up a local MySQL instance or Postgres instance is to use Docker.
# On MacOS/Linux
mkdir -p $HOME/docker/volumes/mysql
docker pull mysql:8.0
docker run --restart always --name mysql8.0 -v \$HOME/docker/volumes/mysql:/var/lib/mysql -p 3306:3306 -d -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=docker mysql:8.0# On Windows
mkdir $HOME/docker/volumes/mysql
docker pull mysql:8.0
docker run --rm --name mysql-docker -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=docker -d -p 3306:3306 mysql:8.0# On MacOS/Linux
mkdir -p $HOME/docker/volumes/postgres
docker pull postgres:11.4
docker run --rm --name pg-docker -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=docker -d -p 5432:5432 -v $HOME/docker/volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data postgres:11.4# On Windows
mkdir $HOME\docker\volumes\postgres
docker pull postgres:11.4
docker run --rm --name pg-docker -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=docker -d -p 5432:5432 postgres:11.4Once in Production, users may log in and add / update content via the dashboard depending on permissions granted them by the admin.
Documentation for the REST API is generated. See the Strapi Documentation Documentation
In this demo, the password has been set to: documentation
All in all, this seems to be a very quick way to set up a GraphQl content service with a dashboard pre-built for users to update content.
I haven't explored the performance for large data at all, but do believe this would be a great solution for small web projects.