The node.js example app

The node.js example app teaches the very basics of how to work with Contentful:

• consume content from the Contentful Delivery and Preview APIs
• model content
• edit content through the Contentful web app

The app demonstrates how decoupling content from its presentation enables greater flexibility and facilitates shipping higher quality software more quickly.

Requirements

• Node >=12
• Git

Without any changes, this app is connected to a Contentful space with read-only access. To experience the full end-to-end Contentful experience, you need to connect the app to a Contentful space with read and write access. This enables you to see how content editing in the Contentful web app works and how content changes propagate to this app.

Common setup

Clone the repo and install the dependencies.

npm install

Comments

Comments may be added to your file as such:

# This is a comment
# Config
PORT=3000

# Session
COOKIE_SECRET=1#1@!545dfvxza@

# Redis
REDIS_HOST=localhost
REDIS_PORT=6379
REDIS_PASSWORD=secret
REDIS_URL=redis://default:1234@example.app:7339

Steps for read-only access

To start the express server, run the following

npm start

Open http://localhost:3000 and take a look around.

Use Docker

You can also run this app as a Docker container:

Step 1: Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/contentful/the-example-app.nodejs.git

Step 2: Build the Docker image

docker build -t the-example-app.nodejs .

Step 3: Run the Docker container locally:

docker run -p 3000:3000 -d the-example-app.nodejs

If you created your own Contentful space, you can use it by overriding the following environment variables:

docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID=<SPACE_ID> \
  -e CONTENTFUL_DELIVERY_TOKEN=<DELIVERY_ACCESS_TOKEN> \
  -e CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_TOKEN=<PREVIEW_ACCESS_TOKEN> \
  -d the-example-app.nodejs