<p dir="ltr">If you are looking into the question of what a headless CMS can offer you that a traditional, full stack, front to back CMS cannot, then there are probably a couple of things that can be assumed about you. One is that you have probably dealt with a traditional web publishing CMS like WordPress or Drupal. Also that you have some technical acumen, you are probably a developer, designer, or have an interest in a web presence. Another is that you have hit some struggle or have some pain point that has led to you to look into if a headless CMS can solve that for you. This article will point out some of the advantages that a <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/headless-cms" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">headless CMS</a> offers. Hopefully, your pain point is covered in here or it sparks an idea for a new way of thinking about what you can do with a CMS.&nbsp;</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">Language Flexibility</h3><p dir="ltr">If you have dealt with a traditional CMS, there is a good chance that you have lived in the land of PHP. But maybe your shop is not a PHP shop. Maybe you are a .NET or Java shop and a client has brought a new blog project to you. Maybe you are on the cutting edge and only deal in the newest of JavaScript front end frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular. With a headless CMS, you can write in whatever language you want. As long as you can make an http request to an API, you are golden. It allows you to focus on crafting the presentation of the content that gets your message across, in a language or framework that you are most comfortable working with.&nbsp;</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">Design Flexibility</h3><p dir="ltr">Most CMS systems have a few types of objects that you can choose to implement, such as Pages, Posts, or Forms. With a headless CMS, you can <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/headless-cms/content-modeling" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">create objects of different types</a> and model them however you like. It is a blank canvas for you to create your content in a way that makes sense to your use case and needs. It basically allows you to create your own wide-open API-powered database without having to know about indexes and sharding.</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">CMS as a Service (CaaS)</h3><p dir="ltr">Everything is &quot;X as a service&quot; now thanks to the movement to the cloud. There are some that wear knowledge of Apache server or IIS like it is a badge of honor. They know how to bounce a server when the connections to the database start pooling up. That is fantastic, but that is not for everyone. Some don&rsquo;t want those concerns. They don&rsquo;t want to have to spend nights or weekends rebooting and updating servers when traffic is low. They only want to have to worry about the endpoint where their content lives. Having a headless CMS offloads a great deal of these infrastructure concerns. For small shops or freelancers, this can be a great weight lifted off of their shoulders when they no longer have to spend time on this.</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">Debugging and Testing</h3><p dir="ltr">There can be a steep learning curve for even experienced developers when developing for a traditional CMS. The inherent decoupling that a headless CMS offers allows you to use tools such as Postman or curl to test your endpoints. This can be especially useful when &nbsp;chasing down pesky bugs by allowing you to easily determine if your problem is before your request for the content, what you are requesting, or what you are doing with the data you receive from the CMS. This also allows you to build out a full test suite where you can mock your data that would be returned from the CMS.</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">Futureproofing</h3><p dir="ltr">Most reliable API products take great care to version their API and not introduce breaking changes. They know that one thing that gives them an advantage is that they are more available and reliable than other solutions. They may introduce other features, but they leave it up to you if you want to implement them or you can just leave things working as they currently are. No forced updates, no library versioning hell. You are not going to have to worry if you have the right version of some obscure package installed on your server in order for your application to run properly. Also, migration to another server or horizontal scaling is as easy as just spinning your application up on another server. You don&rsquo;t have to worry about what tables in some arcane database have references to your original server. You don&rsquo;t have to have any tools to go through and update those to your new server, hoping than none of your data gets corrupted in the process as things are overwritten.</p><p data-empty="true"><br></p><p dir="ltr">These are just a few of the aspects that a <a href="https://cosmicjs.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">headless CMS such as Cosmic</a> can offer to developers over more traditional CMS systems. Hopefully, one or more of these struck on a problem that you have been having or sparked some imagination of something new that you now envision creating.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/jintrocaso" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jamie Introcaso</a> is a Full-Stack Developer in the <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic Community</a>. Read about Jamie&#39;s migration from WordPress to the Cosmic Headless CMS <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/articles/moving-from-wordpress-to-limitless-opportunity-using-cosmic-js-jx2ei3kz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>. If you have any comments or questions about building apps with <a href="https://cosmicjs.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>, reach out to us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js">Twitter</a> and join the conversation on <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community">Slack</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@joelfilip?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Joel Filipe</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/grid?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></p>

5 Advantages to Using a Headless CMS

<p>In this tutorial, I&#39;m going to show you how to create a simple ToDo application using <a href="https://svelte.dev/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Svelte</a> and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>. So lets grab a cup of coffee and start coding.</p><h3>TL;DR</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/apps/svelte-todo-app" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Svelte ToDo App Demo</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/svelte-todo" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download Source Code</a></p><h3>Prerequisites</h3><p>You need to have installed the latest stable version of <a href="https://nodejs.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Node JS</a> and NPM. &nbsp;You will have no problem following the tutorial if you have a basic understanding of:</p><ul><li>HTML, CSS, and JavaScript</li><li>import and export syntax (ES6 modules)</li><li>async/await syntax</li><li>concepts like components</li><li>the axios API</li></ul><p>&nbsp;Let&#39;s get started with our technology stack.&nbsp;</p><h3>What is Svelte?</h3><p><a href="https://svelte.dev/">Svelte</a> is a JavaScript UI library created by Rich Harris. Couple of months ago Svelte 3 has been released. So you think that why we need to learn Svelte if we have React/Angular/Vue. Aren&#39;t these language/frameworks enough? &nbsp;There is great article published in Svelte which gives you the reason behind developing the Svelte. Here is link : <a href="https://svelte.dev/blog/svelte-3-rethinking-reactivity">svelte-3-rethinking-reactivity</a>&nbsp;</p><p>So below are some interesting points about Svelte:&nbsp;</p><ul><li>Svelte is a <strong>compiler</strong>, not a dependency like React or Vue</li><li>Svelte seems to need <strong>less code</strong> for the same things that with React require 40% more LOC (source: Rich Harris)</li><li>Svelte has <strong>no virtual DOM</strong>, compiles to minimal &ldquo;vanilla&rdquo; JavaScript and seems more performing than other libraries</li><li>Your app is tremendously faster. If you see &nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-benchmark" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this JS Framework Benchmark</a>, Svelte is very much faster than the apps built using Angular, React, Vue, etc. This is because Svelte is nothing but vanilla JS.&nbsp;</li></ul><p>If you want to learn more about the Svelte, go through &nbsp;<a href="https://svelte.dev/repl/">Svelte REPL</a>.</p><h3>What about Cosmic?</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a> is an <a data-href="https://cosmicjs.com" href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">API-first CMS</a> that helps teams of developers and content editors build apps faster. It provides lots of great features which will help to easily manage data. <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a> is an amazing content management system with options to categorize and distribute data in a way that makes sense to you.</p><h3>Create new bucket in Cosmic</h3><p>To create app we will require fetch or store data. For this we will be using the power of Cosmic. Create a free account on &nbsp;<a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a> and create new empty bucket &amp; name it as todo-app. For basic Todo list app will have two object types:</p><ul><li>Name</li><li>IsCompleted</li></ul><p>So add this property in bucket along with some initial data. &nbsp;<a href="https://cosmicjs.com/getting-started" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Follow this steps to create bucket in Cosmic.</a></p><h3>Create Svelte application</h3><p>It is very easy to create Svelte app. We are using default template for creating the Todo list application.</p><pre><code>npx degit sveltejs/template todo-app
cd <code>todo-app</code></code>
npm install</pre><p>To run it on local machine hit below command.</p><pre>npm run dev</pre><p>By default Svelte app is run on &nbsp;<a href="http://localhost:5000/" rel="nofollow"></a><a href="http://localhost:5000">http://localhost:5000</a>.</p><p>So you can see the rollup.config.js file in the project. Like webpack, <a href="https://rollupjs.org/">rollup.js</a> is module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex, such as a library or application.</p><p>The starting point of Svelte app is the main.js file. &nbsp;All the Svelte component has .svelte extension. If you take look around the files you will see the App.svelte file which is root component. So a basic Svelte component is divided into 3 parts:</p><ul><li>Under <strong>script</strong> tag you have to write your JavaScript code.</li><li>Under <strong>style</strong> tag you have to define you style. It uses CSS-in-JS style to define you CSS.</li><li>Then you can the write &nbsp;HTML markup.</li></ul><p>Now first we are fetching the Todos from Cosmic using the Cosmic Rest api. So to connect you application with Cosmic Bucket create the config.js file inside src folder and below code.</p><div class="fr-embedly             " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/0a98120359b77ed9b73545c94aa5642a' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/0a98120359b77ed9b73545c94aa5642a" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>To replace the variable defined in config.js file during the build time we have to install a new plugin called &nbsp;<a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/rollup-plugin-replace" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rollup-plugin-replace</a>. After installation open the rollup.config.js file and replace the below code.</p><div class="fr-embedly            " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/79e119663f0a36fe4047be89552122bb' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/79e119663f0a36fe4047be89552122bb" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>So we are completed the Cosmic integration with our Svelte app. First we are going to fetch the Todos from Cosmic Bucket. Here we are using App,svelte as our container component. Like any other libraries Svelte has also its own lifecycle methods i.e. OnMount, beforeUpdate, afterUpdate, onDestroy,etc.</p><p>&nbsp;We need to fetch data every time App.svelte component mounts. Fetching data from Cosmic Rest endpoint we will be using axios. So first install axios.&nbsp;</p><pre>npm install axios </pre><p>After that for each todo create new component called TodoItem.svelte. This component is used to display single todo. So loop over each todo and send it as props to TodoItem.svelte component. On Svelte site there is good collection of examples. You can <a href="https://svelte.dev/examples" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">see here</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>As Svelte has CSS-in-JS we can define CSS for each component. After fetching, we have to add the new todo. For doing this create input field and button in App,svelte file and on click of button call post api to add new todo in Cosmic database. Same changes are require for updating the IsComplete flag and delete todo.</p><p>Update index.html file to add Bootstrap and font-awesome:</p><div class="fr-embedly          " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/08f97855abaaf2134cd03783f6e1b670' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/08f97855abaaf2134cd03783f6e1b670" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>See the below complete code for this simple Todo list application:</p><div class="fr-embedly          " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/bc99883bd85ad4f1acd724b5faa42cdb' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/bc99883bd85ad4f1acd724b5faa42cdb" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>&nbsp;Here is the TodoItem.svelte component:</p><div class="fr-embedly          " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/1480dea346d46037ae2795270dcd4254' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/1480dea346d46037ae2795270dcd4254" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>&nbsp;So now run the below command to see the amazing Todo list application.</p><pre>$ npm run dev</pre><h3><span style="font-size: 14px;">Open <a href="http://localhost:5000/" rel="nofollow"></a><a href="http://localhost:5000">http://localhost:5000</a>.</span></h3><p><br></p><p>To build application in production mode you just need to run</p><pre>$ npm run build</pre><p>To test the production build before publishing, run below command</p><pre>$ npm run start</pre><h3><br></h3><h3>Deploy it</h3><p>We can now deploy our application on any hosting platform. I recommend deploying it on <a href="https://www.netlify.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify</a> because it supports project structures like this and can quickly create deployments. You can deploy application on <a href="https://zeit.co/now">Now</a> or <a href="https://surge.sh/">Surge</a> also.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>In this article I have demonstrated you how to create a Todo application using Svelte and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>. The Cosmic Community has a lot of examples on how to handle integration with email functions, download functions, and third party platforms.</p><p>I really hope that you enjoyed this little app, and please do not hesitate to send me your thoughts or comments about what could I have done better.</p><p>If you have any comments or questions about building apps with Cosmic, <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reach out to us on Twitter</a> and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">join the conversation on Slack</a>.</p>

Build A Simple ToDo App using Svelte and Cosmic

<p>In this tutorial, I&#39;m going to show you how to create a simple but blazing fast blog using <a href="https://reactjs.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">React</a>, &nbsp;<a href="https://react-static.js.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">React Static</a>, and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>. Grab some coffee &amp; let&#39;s build a cool app!</p><h3>TL;DR</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/apps/react-static-blog" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Demo</a><a href="https://github.com/sumitkharche/react-static-cosmicjs-blog" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a><br><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/react-static-blog" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download Source Code</a></p><p><br></p><h3>Prerequisites</h3><p>You need to have installed the latest stable version of <a href="https://nodejs.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Node JS</a> and NPM. Let&#39;s get started with our technology stack.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h3>What is React Static?</h3><p>React Static is a very fast and powerful progressive static site generator implemented based on React and its ecosystem. It&#39;s extremely lightweight, very fast, SEO-ready, and is the most React-friendly static-site library on the planet.</p><p><br></p><h3>What about Cosmic?</h3><p>Cosmic is a headless CMS which is used to build apps faster, together. It is very easy to store and retrieve data and is perfect for building apps like this.</p><p><br></p><h3>Create React Static app</h3><p>It is very easy to create React Static app. Just follow these steps:</p><p><strong>Install the CLI tool:</strong></p><pre>$ npm i -g react-static
# or
$ yarn global add react-static</pre><p>Create a new project!</p><pre>react-static create</pre><p><br>It will ask for name of project then give it as <strong>coffee-blog</strong>. After that it will ask for selecting template so you have to select <strong>basic</strong>.<br><br></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/3be25760-9847-11e9-8811-77f6df9c4f7a-ffdf0990-9830-11e9-ba89-5d57bf003870-smartmockupsjx7nxm5i.jpg" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br></p><h3>Create new bucket in Cosmic</h3><p>To create a blog app we will require data. For this we will be using the power of Cosmic. Create a free account on &nbsp;<a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a> and create new empty bucket &amp; name it as coffee-blog. For every blog it will have three object types:</p><ul><li>Title</li><li>Content</li><li>Image</li></ul><p>So add this property in bucket along with some data. &nbsp;<a href="https://cosmicjs.com/getting-started" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Follow this steps to create bucket in Cosmic.</a></p><p><br></p><h3>Integrate Cosmic into React Static App</h3><p>Create new file in coffee-blog project called <strong>config.js</strong> which will store the Cosmic Bucket, read_key &amp; write_key.</p><div class="fr-embedly                       " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/50afb7dbaec434f51e10018267868df1' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/50afb7dbaec434f51e10018267868df1" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Now we have to fetch data from Cosmic bucket, we are using <strong>graphql</strong> to do this. By default react static app will call jsonplaceholder api. So remove this code and replace below code into <strong>static.config.js</strong>.</p><div class="fr-embedly                       " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/a7caf712e4cb0b0fd2a3a8e1eaf70b05' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/a7caf712e4cb0b0fd2a3a8e1eaf70b05" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>We are not going to learn CSS in this tutorial so add below code inside the <strong>src/app.css</strong> file.</p><p><br></p><div class="fr-embedly                      " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/6402caefb80f7e2a01479720deb4f52c' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/6402caefb80f7e2a01479720deb4f52c" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Inside the <strong>src/App.js</strong> file add below jsx code into the return function which will show the navigation bar.</p><div class="fr-embedly                     " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/fda0f044a18d968b13995557c5428690' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/fda0f044a18d968b13995557c5428690" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>For creating landing page where we are showing list of blog posts, change the <strong>src/pages/index.js</strong> with the below code. Here we are getting posts data that we have fetch using <strong>withRouteData</strong> HOC.</p><div class="fr-embedly                   " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/6da1c6d08fb9d921f3dadf01db302ef3' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/6da1c6d08fb9d921f3dadf01db302ef3" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Create new file under src/pages called <strong>post.js</strong> which will have individual post. So when we click on any post from homepage then this component will render to show post details. Add below code in it.</p><div class="fr-embedly                 " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/063f8835bd76505682914e23bfa2fe20' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/sumitkharche/063f8835bd76505682914e23bfa2fe20" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p><br></p><p>Now we have created homepage and a post component &amp; also fetch data from Cosmic using Graphql query. &nbsp;So now run the below command to see the amazing coffee-blog.</p><pre>$ npm run start</pre><p>Open http://localhost:3000 to see your blog.</p><p>To build application in production mode you just need to run</p><pre>$ npm run build</pre><p>To test the production build before publishing, run below command</p><pre>$ npm run serve</pre><p><br></p><h3>Deploy it</h3><p>We can now deploy our application on any hosting platform. I recommend deploying it on <a href="https://www.netlify.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify</a> because it supports project structures like this and can quickly create deployments.</p><p><br></p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>In this article I have demonstrated you how to create a blogging application using React Static and Cosmic. The Cosmic Community has a lot of examples on how to handle integration with email functions, download functions, and third party platforms.</p><p>I really hope that you enjoyed this little app, and please do not hesitate to send me your thoughts or comments about what could I have done better.</p><p>If you have any comments or questions about building apps with Cosmic, <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reach out to us on Twitter</a> and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">join the conversation on Slack</a>.</p><p><br></p>

How to Build a Blog using React Static and Cosmic

<p>There are some good things about WordPress. It can do pretty much anything with very little knowledge of coding necessary. It was very easy for me to pick a theme, upload some content and bam, there is a CMS website. Maybe it is my technical wanderlust, but WP wasn&#39;t doing it for me anymore. Maybe it was because I have no interest in learning PHP and setting up a local environment to develop for a WordPress instance just seemed to be cumbersome. The other option is just to keep changing things in my production instance. And then the updates and plugins! It was just not what I wanted anymore. Enter <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>, a headless CMS.</p><h3>TL;DR:</h3><p><a href="https://www.jamieintrocaso.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jamie Introcaso&#39;s Gatsby Blog</a><br><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/articles/from-wordpress-to-jamstack-how-to-make-your-website-10x-faster" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">From WordPress to JAMstack</a><br><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/extensions/wordpress-importer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WordPress Importer Extension</a><br><br>I was perusing through Medium one day at the posts that it had curated for me, and I saw an <a href="https://hackernoon.com/from-wordpress-to-jamstack-how-to-make-your-website-10x-faster-e363abc46e2d" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">article describing how easy it was to move from a WordPress site to a website powered by Cosmic</a>. The steps outlined in the article were really simple and they have an extension that will pull over your existing WordPress posts! The example they moved to was a React blog powered by Gatsby. I had no experience with either one of them, but I know that they are all the rage right now! I figured that having a little bit of experience with them definitely could not hurt me. And the great thing about Cosmic is that at the end of the day, it serves up my blog posts like an API. So I can choose my delivery method to be whatever I want.<br><br></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/0c0c0aa0-929c-11e9-80b6-4b95ee233edb-0c879da0-2f0f-11e9-85fa-89e2adcfe001-wordpress-to-cosmic.jpg" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>The article, which was written by one of the co-founders of Cosmic, laid out in easy steps how to move the site over and import all your posts using an importer tool. There is a GitHub repo which has the template for the front-end of the app. Once you have created your &quot;bucket&quot; in the Cosmic web interface, you can wire up the front end to the API to retrieve your posts that you have imported into your bucket.&nbsp;</p><p>There is also an <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/extensions/wordpress-importer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">importer extension</a> that will pull all your posts from your WordPress instance. It works like a champ, with a couple of caveats. The dates used for the posts after the import puts the posts in reverse order (i.e. Your most recent post shows as the earliest post.). This is probably something that I will fix in the GraphQL query. The other is not evident until you set up the new DNS settings on your domain. All of my images used my domain name in the link and since that is not pointing to my WordPress instance, they are broken now. I don&#39;t have a great deal of posts so it is more tedious for me to go through all the posts and put the pictures back in the posts. I could not imagine having to do that for a large number of posts!<br><br></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/14a61770-938a-11e9-abb5-b3b1fa688145-45c9f8b0-2f0f-11e9-b57a-a7bb7216ad7b-later-wordpress.gif" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br>I had a couple of hiccups setting this up, due to me working late at night on this and not properly reading the docs. But when I reached out to the folks with questions or issues, they got right back to me about what I had missed and worked with me to make sure that I was able to figure it out. I cannot speak highly enough about the level of support that I had from them.&nbsp;</p><p>After getting the new blog to run locally, it was time to put it out into the world! The article suggested using <a href="https://www.netlify.com/">Netlify</a> to host the app. You may not have heard of Netlify yet, but you probably have heard the term <a href="https://jamstack.org/">JAMstack</a> which was coined by the CEO of Netlify. Setting up my app for Netlify was super simple. If you use a git provider (I personally uploaded my app to a private GitHub repo), you can hook into the Netlify process to have a CI/CD pipeline anytime you push to the master branch of your repo. They also walk you through setting up your domain to point at your site running on their server as well as handle getting you an SSL cert using Let&#39;s Encrypt! And this was great, because my blog did not have an SSL cert before. I mean, I was going to write an article about installing one on my WordPress instance, but I think this worked out better. &nbsp;</p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>So far, I am really happy with this new setup for my blog. It is simple and open enough to allow me to customize it to my heart&#39;s content. I am sure that there are things that I will miss from the WordPress controls and admin panel. But I will get to learn about Gatsby and React, and I can already see me using Cosmic for another project that I have in mind! If you have any comments or questions about building apps with Cosmic, reach out to us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js">Twitter</a> and join the conversation on <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community">Slack</a>.</p>

Moving From WordPress to Limitless Opportunity Using Cosmic

<p>In this tutorial, we are building a JAMstack website with Cosmic. Let&#39;s first define our JAMstack: &#39;J&#39; stands for JavaScript, our application uses Vue.js. &#39;A&#39; stands for APIs, and we are using the powerful APIs of <a href="https://cosmicjs.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a>. &#39;M&#39; stands for Markup, which is Nuxt.js in this example. For this tutorial, we will be building a simple fitness studio website. In the end, we will deploy it on Netlify which gives serverless
backend services and hosting. Let&#39;s get started.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">TL;DR</span></strong></p><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/apps/jamstack-fitness-website" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Check out the demo</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/nuxt-jamstack-website" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download the codebase</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Introduction</span></strong></p><p>We are building a JAMstack website with the powerful APIs of Cosmic. This website is about fitness and the body. &nbsp;The first page is dynamic with some navigations provided by Vue.js. On the left side navigation, you will find the link to the blog,
whose data is also coming from the Cosmic via the Cosmic APIs. Let&#39;s start now with the requirements.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Requirements</span></strong></p><p>The one and the only requirement is <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/">Node.js</a>. Install it on your system to run npm commands.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Getting Started</span></strong></p><p>Here we are using npm but you can also use yarn to install packages. So if you have installed above software, run the following command to a quick start:</p><p><code>npx create-nuxt-app jamstack_app;</code></p><p>Here jamstack_app is your desired name of the app. Now go to the root of the created folder, and run the following command to run it in development:</p><p><code>npm run dev</code></p><p>Now visit: <a href="http://localhost:3000/">http://localhost:3000/</a> to view the project in development mode.&nbsp;</p><p>Learn more about Nuxt.js quick starter kit here: <a href="https://nuxtjs.org/guide/installation/">Nuxt.js Starter Kit</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Folder Structure</span></strong></p><p>After creating the app, you will get the same folder structure as given in the picture:</p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/b0f99950-8e01-11e9-8e40-370eb5e3d090-Screenshot-from-2019-06-13-23-02-43.png" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Let&#39;s explain the main folders and files of this structure. package.json file contains the record of all modules installed in your project. Static folder contains the static files used in the project like logo and images. Pages folder contains the
pages like home page and blog etc. node_modules has all modules installed and layout contains styling of the project. Config folder is created by us to save the config.js file which will be used at the time dynamic requests to the Cosmic server.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Configuration</span></strong></p><p>We have generated the Nuxt.js app with the app generator but the main configuration is pending to make our app a complete JAMstack app. With the creation of the app, JavaScript and Markup part of the app completed. Now we are configuring the API part
of the app that means the Cosmic part.&nbsp;</p><p>For this, you need a Cosmic account. <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/signup" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sign up for Cosmic</a> official website, it is totally free. Then create a free bucket and create your first object type: &#39;blogs&#39;. Or you can import a built-in bucket, way to import it is given in the below heading.&nbsp;</p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/4c233670-8d35-11e9-9d53-0d7baf38376b-Screenshot-from-2019-06-12-22-41-16.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br></p><p>Now click the basic setting option in your dashboard, it will open your basic setting page as shown above. Note down your bucket slug, bucket_id. Now generate the read and write keys and save them on your computer. Now save them in your project also.
For this create a config folder and create a config.js file in it and save as given below:</p><div class="fr-embedly                    " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/e5f742e2526dff0dab690a232795e6e1.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/e5f742e2526dff0dab690a232795e6e1.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">In-built Bucket</span></strong></p><p>If you don&#39;t want to create a new bucket, then you have an option to import a readymade bucket. For this, download the bucket.json file from our Git codebase and import it from your dashboard from the Import/Export option, check below image for visual
help:</p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/b05f8a00-8d42-11e9-869f-cb5634810819-Screenshot-from-2019-06-13-00-16-34.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Home Page</span></strong></p><p>Let&#39;s get started with the first page that is the home page. In this we will render the dynamic data from Cosmic server with APIs, it will show you the Vue.js part of the website. Here we are going to write the detail of our website and will implement navigation in the header of the website as well as in the bottom part will give a button to navigate to blog. Check out the code of homepage at location: <code>pages/index.vue</code></p><div class="fr-embedly                  " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/4dd54f1ac5b63fab2322ff2ed62e8d70.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/4dd54f1ac5b63fab2322ff2ed62e8d70.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>This page is a template plus vue.js code and pure dynamic in nature. Here we applied a link at the bottom which navigates to the blog page and this blog page is also pure dynamic in nature.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">The Layout of the Website</span></strong></p><p>The complete layout of the app is coded in a single file for good structure. Here we are customizing the header, footer and other color schemes of the app. &nbsp;Check out the code for layout <code>layouts/default.vue</code></p><div class="fr-embedly                 " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/407620e4854910f37214f9faee0e1e59.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/407620e4854910f37214f9faee0e1e59.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Here we defined the body color of the website along with the header, footer, and navigational effects. In the navigation, we have given route to blog page and route to the home page as well. In the header of the app, we have given navigation to home to
the title of the website.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Blog Page</span></strong></p><p>This is the second page of our website, it handles the dynamic fetching of the data from Cosmic server with the help of Cosmic APIs. First of all, check the code and then we will explain it. Code is placed at the location: <code>pages/blog.vue</code></p><div class="fr-embedly                " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/653b6f22b04c5ef541e2dcca70de91b5.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/a9kitkumar/653b6f22b04c5ef541e2dcca70de91b5.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>There are two part of the page, first is template and second if JavaScript part. In the template, we have given the route to the home page with the back button and rendered the title and body of the blog.&nbsp;</p><p>In JavaScript part, we have made of a GET request to the Cosmic server with the help of Cosmic API. This API is the combination of the static URL, bucket slug and object type. In GET request, read key is necessary to get the data from the server.
After a successful request, we manipulated the data and passed to variables as shown in the code.</p><p>&nbsp;<img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/e066a130-8dff-11e9-bbbc-e3026215e4a7-Screenshot-from-2019-06-13-22-51-34.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Static Folder</span></strong></p><p>In the codebase, check out the static folder. As the name describes, it contains the static data and in our case, it contains the static images of our project. As you know our front page id totally static, image shown on the front page resides in this
folder. In the same way, any static image or logo which will be used in the project must be placed here.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">What Have We Built?</span></strong></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/6ca5f420-912a-11e9-bc00-5fc34b01c111-68747470733a2f2f636f736d69632d73332e696d6769782e6e65742f39633962376633302d393132332d313165392d616636352d3935653930663332323632382d6e7578742d6a616d737461636b2e706e67.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>We have built a JAMstack website with the powerful APIs of Cosmic. In JAMstack:</p><ul><li>&#39;J&#39; stands for JavaScript and here Vue.js used as JavaScript part of JAM,</li><li>&#39;A &#39;stands for API, here Cosmic used as the API part of JAM,</li><li>Meaning of &#39;M&#39; is Markup, here Nuxt.js is used as the markup.&nbsp;</li></ul><p>Here the main part is the API part, we have made a GET request with the help of which and got the quick response. This request made with the help of axios module and then JSON data manipulated easily. Format of the Cosmic API response is very simple
to handle.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Deployment to Netlify</span></strong></p><p>We have built an app with Vue.js, Nuxt.js, and Cosmic, but it is not a pure JAMstack app until we can deploy the static assets to a CDN. For this example, we will deploy it to the serverless backend service provider <a href="https://www.netlify.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify</a>.</p><p>Install the <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/netlify-cli" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify CLI</a> and <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/nuxt" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nuxt CLI</a>:</p><pre>npm i -g netlify-cli
npm i -g nuxt</pre><p>Build the static files</p><pre>npm run build</pre><p>Then deploy to Netlify. You will be prompted to select the folder. Type <code>dist</code> to deploy the <code>dist</code> folder.</p><pre>netlify deploy</pre><p><br></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Conclusion</span></strong></p><p>With the help of Cosmic you can create powerful applications. In this example, we were able to build a JAMstack application with the API power of Cosmic. If you have any comments or questions about building apps with Cosmic, reach out to us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js">Twitter</a> and join the conversation on <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community">Slack</a>.</p>

How to Build a JAMstack Website using Vue.js, Nuxt.js and Cosmic

Building a Full Stack SMS-enabled Chat Application using Twilio, Node.js, GraphQL and Cosmic

<p>In this tutorial I&#39;ll be showing you how I built a Vue.js app with Authentication using Cosmic and AWS Lambda prior to deploying to Netlify. Let&#39;s get started.</p><h3>TL;DR</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/apps/vue-cosmic-auth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Demo Link</a><br><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/vue-authentication" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">View Code on Github</a></p><p><a href="https://app.netlify.com/start/deploy?repository=https://github.com/availit/v-cosmic-auth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.netlify.com/img/deploy/button.svg" alt="Deploy to Netlify" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></a></p><h3>Features</h3><ul><li>Netlify hosting (plus CDN, Prerendering, Minification, etc..)</li><li>Vuetify components for interface</li><li>AWS Lambda functions via Netlify</li><li>Cosmic for Database API</li><li>Password hashing using PBKDF2 with Salt</li><li>Email Verification using Nodemailer via SendinBlue</li></ul><h3>Needed Improvements</h3><ul><li>Password reset function</li><li>User avatar support</li></ul><h3>Prerequisites</h3><p>You will be required to have Node JS and npm before starting. Make sure you already have them installed. If not you can find them here: <a href="https://nodejs.org">https://nodejs.org</a></p><p>In order to deploy you will need a Netlify account.</p><p>Also for SMTP server to send email verification link I am using <a href="https://www.sendinblue.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SendInBlue</a> since they give you 300 free emails a day.</p><h3>Project Structure</h3><p><strong>Important things to note:</strong></p><p><strong>~/public/_redirects</strong><br>This file is important since it points all your traffic to the index.html file in order for vue-router to handle the requests. To learn more about Netlify redirects <a href="https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">visit their docs</a>.</p><p><strong>~/cosmic.js</strong><br>This file is the main entry point for Cosmic node library that we will export in order to use through-out our lambda functions.</p><p><strong>~/functions</strong><br>The functions directory holds all of our lambda functions which will automatically get ran on AWS once we deploy to netlify. We&#39;ll be using these functions to handle our hashing and database logic required for Cosmic.</p><h3>Fork and Clone</h3><p>First we&#39;ll be forking the repository on GitHub. Afterwards open up command line or terminal and clone it to your project folder on your local machine with this command:</p><pre>git clone <a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/vue-authentication">https://github.com/cosmicjs/vue-authentication</a></pre><p>Use BitBucket or Gitlab instead?</p><p>If you prefer to use a different git provider you can just clone the repository and upload it to your desired remote.</p><h3>Install</h3><p>In your command line cd into the project root directory that you just cloned and run npm install to download and install all the required dependencies.</p><h3>Integrate Cosmic Bucket</h3><p>In your Cosmic account create a new bucket and call it whatever you want.</p><p>Download this bucket.json file and go to Import / Export Data page in your Cosmic bucket&#39;s Settings, select and upload the downloaded file. This will import all the Object Types and placeholder data.</p><p>Next you&#39;ll need to modify the cosmic.js file within your project directory to connect to the bucket you just created.</p><p>Here&#39;s what you&#39;ll need:</p><ul><li>Bucket slug</li><li>API Read Access Key</li><li>API Write Access Key</li></ul><p><strong>~/cosmic.js</strong></p><div class="fr-embedly    " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/availit/a7473e371e32250831f2a103100524e0.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/availit/a7473e371e32250831f2a103100524e0.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><h3>Integrate SendInBlue SMTP</h3><p>In order for email verification to work you&#39;ll need an SMTP server. For the sake of simplicity for this tutorial I will be using <a href="https://www.sendinblue.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SendInBlue</a> since they provide you with 300 free emails and use the Nodemailer npm package to integrate with.</p><p>After you create an account go to your SMTP &amp; API settings to generate an SMTP key to use in the <strong>CreateNewUser.js</strong> Lambda function, you can find it under the &quot;SMTP&quot; tab.</p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/778d8fb0-7e6a-11e9-aae8-5592095532f4-sendinblue-smtp-key.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Then enter in your email and SMTP password to the following transporter object.</p><p><strong>~/functions/CreateNewUser.js</strong></p><div class="fr-embedly    " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/availit/d18c18c74ab0e042976885bba4579be0.js' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/availit/d18c18c74ab0e042976885bba4579be0.js" class="embedly-card"></a></div><h3>Running your app locally</h3><p>In order for the AWS Lambda functions to run locally properly you&#39;ll need to run the following command:</p><pre>npm run start:lambda</pre><p>This will spin up a local function server using the netlify-functions library.</p><p>Next, you&#39;ll need to make sure you have a .env file in your root project directory to change the VUE_APP_API_HOST variable to point to the lambda server you just started running. Otherwise your app won&#39;t work. Mine started on port 9000 by default.</p><pre>VUE_APP_API_HOST=http://localhost:9000/</pre><p>After that you may open another console and finally start the Vue JS application with this command:</p><pre>npm run serve</pre><p>In order to test the API locally you may need to run Chrome with CORS disabled, you can find out how to do that depending on your OS with this helpful list:</p><p><strong>Windows:</strong></p><pre>&quot;C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe&quot; --disable-web-security --disable-gpu --user-data-dir=~/chromeTemp</pre><p><strong>OSX:</strong></p><pre>open -n -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --args --user-data-dir=&quot;/tmp/chrome_dev_test&quot; --disable-web-security</pre><p><strong>Linux:</strong></p><pre>google-chrome --disable-web-security</pre><p>Now you can navigate to http://localhost:8080 to open the application.</p><h3>Deployment with Netlify</h3><p>Go to your Netlify dashboard and click &quot;<a href="https://app.netlify.com/start" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New site from Git</a>&quot;. Choose your git provider (I use GitHub).</p><p>After you authenticate you can see your list of repositories. Select the one you created for this project you created earlier and set the build command to &quot;npm run build&quot; and &nbsp;the publish directory to &quot;dist&quot;.</p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/67111010-7e6c-11e9-9362-5314c3434f02-build-settings.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Next, you&#39;ll need to make sure you have set the environment variables and have the VUE_APP_API_HOST variable to point to the new site you just created in Netlify. Otherwise your app will not work.</p><pre>VUE_APP_API_HOST=https://yourNewSite.netlify.com/</pre><p><br></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/6b0c0b70-7e6c-11e9-9362-5314c3434f02-Netlify-Evars.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Next you want to set your functions directory to use &quot;lambda&quot; which will be the compiled version of the <strong>/functions</strong> folder.<img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/6fa71760-7e6c-11e9-9362-5314c3434f02-netlify-functions.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>I built this app for open source under MIT license so feel free to upgrade it, hack it, or break it.</p><p>This was built using Cosmic for the user database.. and the password-hash-and-salt library for hashing. Oh, and don&#39;t forget Vuetify, the amazing Vue JS component library by John Leider and over 200+ open source contributors.</p><p>The email verification is using SMTP server hosted with SendinBlue, they give you 300 free transnational emails. Then of course Vuex for state management.</p><p>If you have trouble or it&#39;s not working for you let me know in the comments and I&#39;ll do my best to help! Or reach out via twitter <a href="https://www.twitter.com/aaron_vail" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@Aaron_Vail</a></p>

How to Build an Authentication App using Cosmic, Vue.js, and Lambda

<section name="dd66"><h3 name="4dcb">TL;DR:</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/extensions/export-to-csv" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Export to CSV Extension</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/export-to-csv" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download the codebase</a><br><br></p><p name="0a1c">There are several circumstances where data needs to be exported to a spreadsheet. Either for statistical reasons, or as an alternative means to store data that isn&rsquo;t JSON, despite it&rsquo;s reputation, storing and keeping data in CSV does have it&rsquo;s perks.</p><p name="aa77">Cosmic is a CMS platform that enables you to decouple your content from your products, allowing you to reuse and reimplement that content in various means across various platforms.</p><p name="2a3e">Today we will be going over how to export your data in a CSV.<br><br></p><p name="2a3e"><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/4f232d70-7e36-11e9-9992-cf5b37d5466d-ezgif-3-31b5db25240d.gif" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h3 name="51a6"><br>Before we start</h3><blockquote name="1e7c">NOTE: the following guide assumes you already have a Cosmic account in order to use extensions correctly. If you don&rsquo;t already have one, you can signup <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/signup" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote><p name="01b4">There are two main ways to access and use Cosmic extensions. The first is to add the extension via your settings admin, and the other is to build the extension manually. We&rsquo;ll be going over both methods.</p><h3 name="c8fe"><br>Adding via Cosmic</h3><p><br>Adding the <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/extensions/export-to-csv" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Export to CSV Extension</a> to an existing Cosmic Bucket is simple. Just navigate to your Bucket Settings &gt; Extensions &gt; Export to CSV Extension and click &quot;Install&quot;.<br><br></p><p><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/5a4664c0-7e35-11e9-a67b-5922ec0198f5-Export-to-CSV.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p><br>Once installed, click &quot;Go To Extension&quot; or use the left hand nav bar to navigate to the Export to CSV Extension. Your Bucket&#39;s Objects are then available to select for easy export, complete with Published and Draft Filters.<br><br></p><h3 name="d3e1"><img src="https://cdn.cosmicjs.com/d7375e40-7e34-11e9-9992-cf5b37d5466d-1f436f20-7bde-11e9-93c7-d1a8b031d015-Screen-Shot-2019-05-21-at-10.23.36-AM.png" style="width: 100%;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><br><br>Building manually</h3><p name="199a">The source code for the plugin is available on GitHub for cloning. The instructions for building a usable version of the extension are rather simple:</p><pre name="9506">git clone <a data-href="https://github.com/flynnham/cosmicjs-to-csv-extension" href="https://github.com/flynnham/cosmicjs-to-csv-extension" rel="noopener" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/export-to-csv">https://github.com/cosmicjs/export-to-csv</a> &amp;&amp; cd export-to-csv
yarn install
npm run build</pre><p name="70ec">The above code is responsive for cloning the repository, installing dependencies via <code>yarn</code>, and then building a working version via <code>npm run build</code> . Doing this, as per instructions the repository README, will add a <code>build.zip</code> file in the main project file. This is the extension itself that Comic JS uses when uploading.</p><p name="4139">From there we can simply log into our Cosmic account, navigating to the bucket dashboard of choice. In this example, I will be navigating to one of my test buckets.</p><p name="4139"><br></p><p name="4139"><br></p><figure name="1bcd"><img data-image-id="1*Gf3txj7P5XMbSp9tw30QiQ.png" data-width="1171" data-height="858" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Gf3txj7P5XMbSp9tw30QiQ.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></figure><p name="834f"><br></p><p name="834f">Expanding the <strong>Settings</strong> on the left hand sidebar will reveal an option called <strong>Extensions</strong>. Clicking that specific menu item, will bring up the extensions page.</p><p name="834f"><br></p><figure name="fb94"><img data-image-id="1*KP-oT9xeeVBuJnXEzMYI9Q.png" data-width="1222" data-height="924" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*KP-oT9xeeVBuJnXEzMYI9Q.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></figure><p name="d73d"><br></p><p name="d73d">Just like when we were adding the extension manually, we find ourselves at the Extensions screen. Unlike adding the plugin directly, we will be using the <strong>+ Add Extension</strong> tab to manually add our own custom version.</p><p name="d73d"><br></p><figure name="f541"><img data-image-id="1*lJUSS4ujTPFf9KG6vFf7mw.png" data-width="1148" data-height="949" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*lJUSS4ujTPFf9KG6vFf7mw.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></figure><p name="f038"><br></p><p name="f038">Then we manually drag our <code>build.zip</code> file into the area labeled<strong>&nbsp;Drop .zip file here</strong>, or just simple click <strong>+ Add zip file</strong> to manually choose the file from the filesystem. Doing so will then show the following screen:</p><p name="f038"><br></p><figure name="e810"><img data-image-id="1*h2MRak1NZqhMUXLB6maF1A.png" data-width="1137" data-height="828" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*h2MRak1NZqhMUXLB6maF1A.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></figure><p name="ba09"><br></p><p name="ba09">We now have a new option to export Cosmic Objects via the <strong>Export to CSV</strong> on the top left of the screen.</p><p name="ba09"><br></p><h3 name="e11d">How to export your&nbsp;Objects</h3><figure name="790f"><img data-image-id="1*13BdT-aIbkjlU-521mjNDg.png" data-width="1170" data-height="607" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*13BdT-aIbkjlU-521mjNDg.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii"></figure><p name="d606"><br></p><p name="d606">The user interface is fairly intuitive. Each recognized Object Type will be shown near the bottom with a green button, which will execute client-side data fetching and processing to convert your objects into a CSV, and then download it.</p><p name="c23e">Object Status exists as a way to specifically filter out content based on and Object it&rsquo;s <code>status</code> attribute, so you can specifically only return data for the specified mode. <strong>All</strong> just returns all Objects without filtering.</p></section><section name="2cfa"><h3 name="d0fe">Conclusion</h3><p name="5b0c">While I&rsquo;ve built many client-side solutions in my time, this was actually my first JAMstack application. And I need to say, it was actually quite fun to do.&nbsp;</p><p name="4dcc">Cosmic is a platform that enables both content creators and developers to extend their content in ways that most platforms won&rsquo;t, and I look forward to writing more apps and extensions with them when I can.</p><p name="4dcc">If you have any comments or questions about building apps with Cosmic, <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmic_js" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reach out to us on Twitter</a> and <a href="https://cosmicjs.com/community" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">join the conversation on Slack</a>.</p></section>

Exporting Cosmic data to CSV

<p>Creating / updating our portfolios is a necessary evil these days. &nbsp;Places change, people change, and thus the cycle of content creation and management churns continuously. &nbsp;When you find yourself in need of &nbsp;a portfolio redesign, there are tons of tools and services to consider. &nbsp;One that should currently peak your interest is the Gatsby JS static site generator along with a headless CMS, like Cosmic. &nbsp;Today, with these two tools, we will create a working portfolio ready for continuous deployment, with the power to be rebuilt when content changes are made.</p><h3>TLDR:</h3><p><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/apps/gatsby-agency-portfolio" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gatsby Portfolio Site Demo</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/cosmicjs/gatsby-agency-portfolio" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download the Codebase</a>&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>0.0 Before We Start</h2><p>We are creating a portfolio site mostly with static data, but it would nice to be able to easily modify the content of our site without needing to modify a bunch of source code. &nbsp;So we are building a client that consumes content stored on a Content Management Service and programmatically displays it at whatever URL we choose.&nbsp;</p><h3>0.1 Tools We Are Using</h3><ul><li><a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gatsby JS</a> - This is a static site generator that will automatically fetch new data and rebuild our site files when changes are made to our content. &nbsp;Comes bundled with data fetching wizardry GraphQL and the ever present React JS front end framework.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><a href="https://cosmicjs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic</a> - Our Content Management Service that will store all the information we need about our site. &nbsp;Cosmic offers very flexible data model definition that will allow us to store all types of information, from iterables to simple text fields and HTML content. &nbsp; <strong>NOTE!</strong> - <em>In order to follow along with this tutorial you will need to create a bucket on Cosmic and fill it with the appropriate data objects.</em></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><a href="https://rsuitejs.com/en">RSuite</a> - A library of pre-styled components that works with react to give us pre-styled components. &nbsp;This will allow us to use components that look great out of the box, while also giving us flexibility to make adjustments as needed.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><a href="https://www.netlify.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify</a> (Optional) - A deployment service that will let us hook directly into a git repository. &nbsp;Using this we can configure webooks for rebuilding static files as well as make automatic deploys when source code changes occur.</li></ul><p>Let&#39;s go ahead and begin configuring our setup.</p><h2>1.0 Installation and Setup</h2><p>We only have a few software requirements needed to start building. Mainly we need <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/">Node JS</a>, either npm or yarn, and we will be using <a href="https://git-scm.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">git</a> to do some deployment things on <strong>Netlify</strong> if you so choose.</p><h3>1.1 Initializing our Project</h3><p>Once you get those installed, we can begin setting up our development environment. &nbsp;Gatsby uses a very handy dandy CLI to allow us to bootstrap our project with a project directory ready to build and serve from a Node environment.</p><p>If you don&#39;t have the CLI you can install it with a simple npm terminal command:</p><pre>$npm install -g gatsby-cli</pre><p>This will take a moment to install but after a few seconds you will have access to gatsby terminal command which we can use to initialize our project:</p><pre>$gatsby new gatsby-portfolio</pre><p>Now we have a directory called <strong>gatsby-portfolio</strong> in the location you ran the gatsby command, change to that directory and list its contents:</p><pre>$cd gatsby-portfolio/ &amp;&amp; ls -la</pre><p>You should see a list of folders and files similar to this:</p><pre><code>.
├── node_modules
├── src
├── .gitignore
├── .prettierrc
├── gatsby-browser.js
├── gatsby-config.js
├── gatsby-node.js
├── gatsby-ssr.js
├── LICENSE
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
└── README.md</code></pre><p>open up <strong>package.json</strong> and we will see we have some terminal scripts that we can now use to build / serve our project. Try running the start script in your terminal:</p><pre>$npm start</pre><p>or&nbsp;</p><pre>$yarn start</pre><p>After a few seconds we should see a success message in our terminal and we should be able to view our initial project view on our <a href="http://localhost:8000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">localhost</a>, your should see something like this:</p><p><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cosmicjs/1017d800-70f4-11e9-b4ca-010bf33e4f63-gatsby-start-screen.png" style="width: 410px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Great, now press <strong>ctrl + C</strong> within your terminal to stop the development server and we are now ready install our node libraries.</p><h3>1.2 Installing our Libraries</h3><p>We require a few plugins from Gatsby to allow our Graphql queries to run, as well as a few extras for environment configuration and our component library RSuite. &nbsp;From within your project directory, we need to run some terminal commands to get our js libraries:</p><pre>$yarn add rsuite dotenv gatsby-source-cosmicjs gatsby-plugin-sass gatsby-plugin-less node-sass less</pre><p>Let&#39;s go through these and talk about what we are adding to our project here:</p><ul><li><strong>rsuite</strong> - our component library that I mentioned above. &nbsp;Installing this let&#39;s us import js classes and insert pre-styled React components.</li><li><strong>dotenv</strong> - Allows us to configure our source code with sensitive api keys, token, whatever that may change between developers but should be present when the source code is built.</li><li><strong>gatsby-source-cosmicjs</strong> - a gatsby plugin that will let us easily make graphql requests to the Cosmic graphql API.</li><li><strong>gatsby-plugin-sass / gatsby-plugin-less / node-sass / less</strong> - Gatsby plugins and styling libraries that will let us use .scss and .less files. &nbsp;These will allow us to import rsuite styling specs and bundle them properly on build.</li></ul><h3>1.3 Configuring Gatsby</h3><p>In order for Gatsby to be able to build our html files, we need to fetch data from Cosmic and build each page using the data graphql retrieves. &nbsp;Let&#39;s go ahead and open <strong>gatsby-config.js</strong> and add our installed packages:</p><div class="fr-embedly            " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/04020f1404792702294814e65a1141e3' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/04020f1404792702294814e65a1141e3" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>We have added our plugins for <strong>sass</strong> and <strong>less</strong>, and also added our <strong>gatsby-source-cosmicjs</strong> plugin. &nbsp;You&#39;ll notice that we are using some environment variables to configure this plugin so we need to add a hidden file that will store these variables.</p><pre>$touch .env</pre><p>Now add your variables to this file and <strong>dotenv</strong> will take care of defining these using line 1 of our <strong>gatsby-config.js</strong> file. &nbsp;You can find the value to assign to these variables from within your Cosmic bucket: Bucket Name &gt; Dashboard &gt; Settings &gt; Basic Settings:</p><div class="fr-embedly           " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/3e971eeda0b866d05cee9f78a6e82491' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/3e971eeda0b866d05cee9f78a6e82491" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Now we are ready to build!</p><h2>2.0 Building Our Components</h2><p>So what are we building exactly. &nbsp;Well, basically we will create one large Page component and create a series of display components to handle each section of our portfolio. &nbsp;Let&#39;s break this down:</p><pre>src/pages/index.js</pre><ul><li>This is our home page and where all of our components will be loaded and used to display portfolio info.</li></ul><pre>src/components/projects.js</pre><ul><li>This will be our projects section that will take project data and display information about each project. &nbsp;This will take a prop composed of our portfolio projects and iterate over them to display data when appropriate.</li></ul><pre>src/components/work.js</pre><ul><li>This will a section highlighting our skills and the types of services / work we offer to people that might peruse our portfolios.</li></ul><pre>src/components/about.js</pre><ul><li>This will be a section that talks about us, displaying any personal data we want to share.</li></ul><pre>src/components/contact.js</pre><ul><li>Finally we have a component that we will use for displaying a contact form that will let users email us if they have any inquires.</li></ul><h3>2.1 The Home Page</h3><p>This is our main component that act as our entry point for our portfolio. &nbsp;Its job is to make several Graphql API requests for our portfolio data from Cosmic and pass that data onto the different sections of our portfolio. &nbsp;Let&#39;s look at the component and talk about what&#39;s happening:</p><div class="fr-embedly      " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/ad7675d930faa86ca170ee16001dc0a9' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/ad7675d930faa86ca170ee16001dc0a9" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>The important parts of this The only display element that really lives here is the splash screen which gives us a little bit&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h3>2.2 Modify the Header Component</h3><p>By default Gatsby gives us a <strong>Layout</strong> component that lets us wrap each page with a <strong>Header</strong> and <strong>Footer</strong>. &nbsp;We are going to add some navigation for our portfolio into the header so users can navigate to different sections of our Portfolio by clicking on a nav bar that we will import from rsuite:</p><div class="fr-embedly     " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/54a7f2a4ef7c3800f099b2dd1b25728f' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/54a7f2a4ef7c3800f099b2dd1b25728f" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>These links will scroll the home page down to each section via the name properties placed on each section on our home page.</p><h3>2.3 The Work Component</h3><p>This component takes in our data about any services we provide, specifically a <strong>names</strong>, a short <strong>summary,&nbsp;</strong>and a more in depth <strong>description</strong>, and let&#39;s us display that to our users:</p><div class="fr-embedly    " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/1b20f1c0fb1549364033d643c14efd19' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/1b20f1c0fb1549364033d643c14efd19" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>This iterates through our services objects. &nbsp;For every service that exists we add a new div to the work component section. Now we can modify and add data to our services on Cosmic and it will update accordingly.</p><h3>2.4 The Projects and About Components</h3><p>These sections will behave in essentially the &nbsp;same way, &nbsp;we display some information from our &quot;Home Page&quot;. &nbsp;Just a bit of text to give the user some context for each section, but after that we just iterating through our list objects we have saved to our Cosmic bucket:</p><div class="fr-embedly" data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/48a21123f39244c52f53a992c4426b11' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/48a21123f39244c52f53a992c4426b11" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>And just like Project displays a heading and display images and data about projects, we can do the same with the individuals and data in the about section:</p><p><br></p><div class="fr-embedly   " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/0544a30590e0c20d4d29ee8416f0b6b8' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/0544a30590e0c20d4d29ee8416f0b6b8" class="embedly-card"></a></div><h3>2.5 The Contact Component</h3><p>Lastly we have a component that will users to contact us at an email we specify. &nbsp;This will handle our contact form, and will be initialized with some state variables so we can control our user inputs, all the input and form components are handled by rsuite so we don&#39;t have to add too many styling properties to our form fields and feedback components:</p><div class="fr-embedly      " data-original-embed="<a href='https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/0c42b547d2b487b48c9c52e686d7fbad' class='embedly-card'></a>"><a href="https://gist.github.com/JacobKnaack/0c42b547d2b487b48c9c52e686d7fbad" class="embedly-card"></a></div><p>Essentially we Validate our form fields and check if all the form fields are present, then we a the <strong>mailto</strong> url to open an email client and populate it with our message.</p><h2>3.0 Deployment (optional)</h2><p>Now we are ready to deploy our app. &nbsp;The most important part of this process is making sure that our app rebuilds itself when we change any data on Cosmic. &nbsp;If we integrate continuous deployment using git <strong>Netlify</strong> will allow us to activate a buildhook in order to generate new static files using updated data fetched from the Cosmic API.</p><h3>3.1 Deploying from Git</h3><p>Go to <a href="https://www.netlify.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netlify</a> and create an account if you don&#39;t aready have one. &nbsp;From the apps dashboard click <strong>New Site from Git</strong> at the app dahsboard. &nbsp;From there you will be walked through the process of authorizing Netflify to access a repository from a git service (github, gitlab, bitbucket).</p><p>You will have to add you <strong>COSMIC_READ_KEY</strong> and your <strong>COSMIC_BUCKET_SLUG</strong> as environment variables. This can be found under the deploy settings once the app has been created on Netlify. &nbsp;In the same area you can create your <strong>buildhook</strong> to allow Cosmic to request a rebuild of your files once an update is made:</p><p><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cosmicjs/a01c7490-7353-11e9-9e31-110b00e15f97-Screen-Shot-2019-05-10-at-11.34.32-AM.png" style="width: 522px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Once the build hooks is created go over to Cosmic and add it to the <strong>webhooks</strong> tab under the settings for your bucket:</p><p><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cosmicjs/dbfe0b90-7353-11e9-808f-9fee33ce619d-Screen-Shot-2019-05-10-at-11.45.49-AM.png" style="width: 141px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><p>Follow the instructions for webhooks to fire a post request to that url every time an object is updated and you should have a continuously deployed, super fast portfolio site ready to be updated.</p><p>Thanks for following along with me and I&#39;ll see you next time I decide to build something cool :)&nbsp;</p>

Start building today