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Payload CMS & Astro

PayloadCMS is a headless open-source content management system that can be used to provide content for your Astro project.

Integrating with Astro

Prerequisites

  1. An Astro project - If you don’t have an Astro project yet, our Installation guide will get you up and running in no time.
  2. A MongoDB database - PayloadCMS will ask you for a MongoDB connection string when creating a new project. You can set one up locally or use MongoDBAtlas to host a database on the web for free.
  3. A PayloadCMS REST API - Create a PayloadCMS project and connect it to your MongoDB database during the setup.

Configuring Astro for your PayloadCMS collection

Your Payload project template will contain a file called Posts.ts in src/collections/. If you did not choose a template during installation that created a content collection for you, you can create a new Payload CMS Collection by adding this configuration file manually. The example below shows this file for a collection called posts that requires title, content, and slug fields:

src/collections/Posts.ts
import { CollectionConfig } from "payload/types";


const Posts: CollectionConfig = {
  slug: "posts",
  admin: {
    useAsTitle: "title",
  },
  access: {
    read: () => true,
  },


  fields: [
    {
      name: "title",
      type: "text",
      required: true,
    },
    {
      name: "content",
      type: "text",
      required: true,
    },
    {
      name: "slug",
      type: "text",
      required: true,
    },
  ],
};


export default Posts;

  1. Import and add both Users (available in all PayloadCMS projects) and any other collections (e.g. Posts) to the available collections in the payload.config.ts file.

    src/payload.config.ts
    import { buildConfig } from "payload/config";
    import path from "path";
    

    import Users from "./collections/Users";
    import Posts from "./collections/Posts";
    

    export default buildConfig({
      serverURL: "http://localhost:4321",
      admin: {
        user: Users.slug,
      },
      collections: [Users, Posts],
      typescript: {
        outputFile: path.resolve(__dirname, "payload-types.ts"),
      },
      graphQL: {
        schemaOutputFile: path.resolve(__dirname, "generated-schema.graphql"),
      },
    });

    This will make a new collection called “Posts” appear in your PayloadCMS Dashboard next to the “Users” collection.

  2. Enter the “Posts” collection and create a new post. After saving it, you will notice the API URL appear in the bottom right corner.

  3. With the dev server running, open http://localhost:4321/api/posts in your browser. You should see a JSON file containing the post you have created as an object.

    {
      "docs":[
          {
            "id":"64098b16483b0f06a7e20ed4",
            "title":"Astro & PayloadCMS Title 🚀",
            "content":"Astro & PayloadCMS Content",
            "slug":"astro-payloadcms-slug",
            "createdAt":"2023-03-09T07:30:30.837Z",
            "updatedAt":"2023-03-09T07:30:30.837Z"
          }
      ],
      "totalDocs":1,
      "limit":10,
      "totalPages":1,
      "page":1,
      "pagingCounter":1,
      "hasPrevPage":false,
      "hasNextPage":false,
      "prevPage":null,
      "nextPage":null
    }

Fetching Data

Fetch your PayloadCMS data through your site’s unique REST API URL and the route for your content. (By default, PayloadCMS will mount all routes through /api.) Then, you can render your data properties using Astro’s set:html="" directive.

Together with your post, PayloadCMS will return some top-level metadata. The actual documents are nested within the docs array.

For example, to display a list of post titles and their content:

src/pages/index.astro
---
import HomeLayout from "../layouts/HomeLayout.astro";


const res = await fetch("http://localhost:5000/api/posts") // http://localhost:4321/api/posts by default
const posts = await res.json()
---


<HomeLayout title='Astro Blog'>
  {
    posts.docs.map((post) => (
        <h2 set:html={post.title} />
        <p set:html={post.content} />
    ))
  }
</HomeLayout>

Building a blog with PayloadCMS and Astro

Create a blog index page src/pages/index.astro to list each of your posts with a link to its own page.

Fetching via the API returns an array of objects (posts) that include, among others, the following properties:

  • title
  • content
  • slug
src/pages/index.astro
---
import HomeLayout from "../layouts/HomeLayout.astro";


const res = await fetch("http://localhost:5000/api/posts") // http://localhost:4321/api/posts by default
const posts = await res.json()
---


<HomeLayout title='Astro Blog'>
  <h1>Astro + PayloadCMS 🚀</h1>
  <h2>Blog posts list:</h2>
  <ul>
    {
      posts.docs.map((post) =>(
        <li>
          <a href={`posts/${post.slug}`} set:html={post.title} />
        </li>
      ))
    }
  </ul>
</HomeLayout>

Using the PayloadCMS API to generate pages

Create a page src/pages/posts/[slug].astro to dynamically generate a page for each post.

src/pages/posts/[slug].astro
---
import PostLayout from "../../layouts/PostLayout.astro"


const {title, content} = Astro.props


// The getStaticPaths() is required for static Astro sites.
// If using SSR, you will not need this function.
export async function getStaticPaths() {
    let data = await fetch("http://localhost:5000/api/posts")
    let posts = await data.json()


    return posts.docs.map((post) => {
        return {
            params: {slug: post.slug},
            props: {title: post.title, content: post.content},
        };
    });
}
---
<PostLayout title={title}>
    <article>
        <h1 set:html={title} />
        <p set:html={content} />
    </article>
</PostLayout>

Publishing your site

To deploy your site visit our deployment guide and follow the instructions for your preferred hosting provider.

Community Resources

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