struggling to configure localContentPath vs. rootPath vs. collection path (MDX content in a folder next to the nextjs site folder)

[nkuehn]

Hi,

I am evaluating tina for a retrofit into a bigger custom documentation site build. the content base is all MDX and frontmatter based so tina felt like something that could be a fit for exploring a more UI based editing option.

i am just trying to get a local dev setup started with basics - no fancy workflow, branching, media or other needs for now.

It's a monorepo, the nextjs application is sitting in /packages/next-docs. The MDX content hierarchy sits outside the packages folder in a root folder (let's call it "/contentrepo" here for simplification).

First I pointed the config to ./../../contentrepo as the path of the collection. That led to a mess with the paths because somewhere in the filesystem logic tina is cutting of a number of characters from the path that it takes from what it thinks is its root path (in that case the location of the nextjs project where I added tina and called it.)

Found an undocumented localContentPathcontent flag that seemed to be what I need, set that to ./../../../contentrepo and changed the path in the collection to an empty string. But that led to the dev console erroring that I need to set rootPath. Switched to passing --rootPath $INIT_CWD in package.json (tested it, it's the absolute path the the packages/next-docs. No avail, so I give up now and ask here. This is the output (anonymized company and user ID):

yarn dev:cms
# fully expanded CLI call that this yielded:
# tinacms dev --port 3001 --datalayer-port 3002 --rootPath /Users/myUserName/GitHub/myCompany-docs/packages/next-docs --noTelemetry -c next dev
🦙 TinaCMS Dev Server is initializing...
Using separate content repo at /Users/myUserName/GitHub/myCompany-docs/contentrepo


Unable to find Tina folder, if you're working in folder outside of the Tina config be sure to specify --rootPath

Unable to start dev server, please fix your Tina config / resolve any errors above and try again

Any ideas?

PS: some google results still point to https://pre-beta.tina.io/ , which was really confusing with a 2021 announcement link being the only hint that this is old and not new.

[kulesy]

Hey @nkuehn,

Could you provide us with a reproducible example (GH repo)?

Cheers.

[kulesy]

Thanks, I will take a look into that and get back to you.

[kulesy]

Hi @nkuehn, could you try create a "tina/" folder inside your content directory. TinaCMS requires this as it is where it writes the generated files.

[nkuehn]

Interesting, I did create /content/tina/.gitignore (blank, to retain the folder) and it starts now. Pushed it.

But it doesn't generate anything into the folder (previously there was an ignored generated folder). The actual config is still in /tina-next-app/tina
The next app isn't working for various reasons,

• e.g. client-page.tsx imports. import type { PageQuery } from "../../tina/__generated__/types"; which is in the next app folder and not in the folder outside the app which has the markdown content.
• localStorage.getItem is not a function errors

But I would not pay too much attention to the next app, it does not have its content available any more.

What's the intended usage scenario of the localContentPath flag? I think I lack the archtiecture understanding for why generated output would be written into the content folder. Would that be for tina cloud to read it?

[nkuehn]

@kulesy I got a notification with you full response but can't find it here any more.

It works, thank you very much for the debug work and for fixing the error handling!

TLDR:

• content folder needs a "tina" folder
• schema needs to omit "/content" segment in the path to the content, it's implicit in the local content root config