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Integrate Prismic, an API-based CMS, in your Next.js application.

We are going to explore how to integrate Prismic in a Next.js application step by step. For this tutorial, we'll consider that you're starting from a simple Next.js application without a specific server configuration and a simple routing based on the pages folder. All the examples below come from this sample. Don't hesitate to go through the code to put these example in context.

So lets dive right into it!

Table of content

Installation

Install prismic-javascript to make queries.

npm install --save [email protected]

Install prismic-reactjs to quickly render structured content from Prismic API.

npm install --save prismic-reactjs

Install express to build a server and use its embedded url matching system.

npm install --save express

Install next-routes to build a router.

npm install --save next-routes

How to connect to your Prismic API

Prismic offers an API which you can contact by specifying an endpoint but also an access token if you want your API to be private. We'll create a configuration file to declare these:

Configuration:

prismic-configuration.json

{
	"apiEndpoint": "https://your-repo-name.cdn.prismic.io/api/v2",
	"accessToken": "123456789"
}

How to create a Prismic client

The Prismic client is a JavaScript object coming from the library prismic-javascript that helps you build queries to retrieve your content from your Prismic API. It provides multiple ways to retrieve it, by custom type, by a specific UID, by multiple predicates etc.

A client for server side rendering

First we're gonna create a module to export the Prismic client. For the server side, we'll need to provide the request object to the Prismic client so we can get cookies for the Prismic preview.

Instantiate the client:

prismic.js

import  PrismicLib  from  'prismic-javascript'
import  PrismicConfig  from  './prismic-configuration.json'
let  frontClient
export  const  Client  = (req  =  null) => {
	if(!req  &&  frontClient) return  frontClient  //prevent generate new instance for client side since we don't need the refreshed request object.
	else {
		const  options  =  Object.assign({}, req  ? {req} : {}, PrismicConfig.accessToken  ? {accessToken:  PrismicConfig.accessToken} : {})
	return  Prismic.client(PrismicConfig.apiEndpoint, options)
	}
}

Link Resolving

Another major concept in Prismic is the link resolver. It helps you resolve the url of a Prismic document. It's useful for the Prismic preview but also when you have a link from one document to another. The API is going to return all the metadata of the linked document and your link resolver will be able to convert this to a url for your website.

In the following code snippet, we are going to export the link resolver in the same module above:

prismic.js

export  const  linkResolver  =  doc  => {
	if (doc.type  ===  'homepage') return  '/'
	else if (doc.type  ===  'products') return  '/products'
	else if (doc.type  ===  'product') return  '/products/'  +  doc.uid
	else if (doc.type  ===  'blog_home') return  '/blog'
	else if (doc.type  ===  'blog_post') return  '/blog/'  +  doc.uid
	else return  '/'
}

How to manage a dynamic routing

For this article we are assuming that you have built a simple Next.js application with the default behavior, based on the pages folder.

Now that we have configured a client for Prismic, we need to configure the dynamic routing in your application. Prismic includes a special content field called, UID. This field is a unique and customizable identifier each document of a given Custom Type. The UID is used mainly for urls which is why we are going to dynamically match the UID on the route level so we can query the content accordingly.

Build your router

First, we are gonna build a simple router to match our different urls with the help of next-routes. You can refer to the installation guide for next-routes to help you get started with this.

Configure your router:

The router from Express allows you to extract a dynamic parameter from the url with the following syntax: :your-parameter. So in the example below, if we navigate to the url mywebsite.com/products/coffee-from-kenya, the router will match coffee-from-kenya and provide it as the parameter uid.

routes.js

const  routes  =  require('next-routes')
module.exports  =  routes()
.add('index', '/')
.add('products', '/products')
.add('product', '/products/:uid')
.add('bloghome', '/blog')
.add('blogpost', '/blog/:uid')
.add('notfound', '/*')

Each route in the example above will get its content from Prismic. This means that each route is related to a Prismic document. To resolve a page's url based on a Prismic document, you can refer to the configuration of a link resolver section.

Build your server

Now that our router is configured, we are going to build a simple server. Next.js embed a helper to set up an Express server in a few lines of code. You can refer to the installation guide for Express to help you get started with this.

Setup the server: server.js

const  next  =  require("next")
const  helmet  =  require('helmet')
const  routes  =  require("./routes")
const  app  =  next({ dev:  process.env.NODE_ENV  !==  "production" })
const  handler  =  routes.getRequestHandler(app)
const  express  =  require("express")

app.prepare().then(() => {
	express()
	.use(handler)
	.use(helmet())
	.listen(3000, () =>  process.stdout.write(`Point your browser to: http://localhost:3000\n`))
})

Update your build configuration

Typically, if you start a Next.js application, you use the command next start. By using a custom server configuration, you need to update your configuration in package.json:

"scripts": {
	"dev": "node server.js",
	"build": "next build",
	"start": "NODE_ENV=production node server.js"
}

How to use a dynamic route parameter in a component

Everything is now setup. Let's take a look at a quick example that shows how to get a dynamic parameter from your routing system.

In the router section above, we created a route /products/:uid linked to the component Product in our application. As soon as you navigate to a url with this pattern, you will instantiate the component product which is going to receive the dynamic parameter in a variable uid. Here's how to get this uid parameter:

product.js

import  React  from  'react'

class Product extends  React.Component {
	static  async  getInitialProps({ req, query }) {
		console.log(query.uid)
	}
	render() { ... }
}

When you configure next-routes, the query object is injected in any component linked to a route. It contains all the dynamic parameters configured in your url. You are now able to use it in any way you want. For example, you can use it to query your content from Prismic.

How to query your content from Prismic

The Prismic client contains a few helpers to get your content. For example, you can retrieve a single document, a list of documents, a document based on its UID, etc. Let's discover this with a basic example that gets a product from the UID that we get dynamically from our routing system:

product.js

import  React  from  'react'
import { Client } from  './prismic'

export  default  class  extends  React.Component {

	static  async  getInitialProps({ req, query }) {
		try {
			const  product  =  await  Client(req).getByUID('product', query.uid)
			return { product }
		} catch(error) {
			return { error }
		}
	}

	render() {
		return <div>{this.props.product.id}</div>
	}
}

If you want to know more about querying Prismic, you can refer to the official Prismic documentation for React.

How to integrate your content in your templates

Now that you have your content, what's left to do is to render it. Let's take a basic example with a couple of Rich Text fields (styled text fields in Prismic) and an Image field.

First let's you need to install prismic-reactjs. You can refer to the installation guide for reactjs.

products.js

import  React  from  'react'
import  {RichText, Date, Link}  from  'prismic-reactjs'
import { Client, linkResolver } from  './prismic'

export  default  class  extends  React.Component {

	static  async  getInitialProps({ req, query }) {
		try {
			const  product  =  await  Client(req).getByUID('product', query.uid)
			return { product }
		} catch(error) {
			return { error }
		}
	}

	render() {
		return (
			<div>
				{RichText.render(this.props.product.data.product_name, linkResolver)}
				{RichText.render(this.props.product.data.product_description, linkResolver)}
				<img src={this.props.product.data.product_illustration.url} />
			</div>
		)
	}
}

If you want to know more about Prismic integration in your templates, you can refer to the official Prismic documentation for React.

Setup the Prismic preview

The Prismic preview allows you to write a draft on Prismic and preview it on your website without publishing it. It's useful to see your content in place without having to publish and make it available to all your users. The preview can also be shared with anybody using a generated link. If you want to know more about the preview, you can refer to the official documentation about the preview. For this you can rely on the Node.js documentation which is also based on Express.

Want more?

If you didn't get enough with this little tutorial, you can find well detailed articles about SEO, preview, server side rendering and more on Gary Meehan's website.