How to integrate Gentics Mesh with Netlify

We have added Netlify support to Gentics Mesh via the Gentics Mesh Netlify Integration Plugin.

How to integrate Gentics Mesh with Netlify

By Johannes Schüth, on October 6, 2019

Netlify is an application delivery network combined with a continuous deployment toolchain that you can use to build and host your static website for free. By using our Gentics Mesh Netlify Integration Plugin you can use Gentics Mesh to edit your content and have your static website updated automatically.

If you’re new to Netlify or the JAMstack in general, you can find a good introduction at the JAMstack website. In one sentence, this plugin allows you to use Gentics Mesh as a CMS for creating your content and publishing it without the need for a webserver.

The plugin is fully open source.

Usage

Prerequisites

This tutorial expects that you already have a working Netlify-powered site, that is connected to your git provider and has configured the build commands correctly. It is also a requirement that your Gentics Mesh installation is reachable from the Netlify servers.

When adding this plugin to your Mesh installation, it will register to the publish, delete and unpublish events. The plugin will then trigger the configured webhooks to rebuild your site.

Configuring Netlify

To use the plugin you need to first setup a build hook which can be added in the Build & Deploy → Continuous Deployment section of your Netlify site.

The Gentics Mesh plugin needs this token to trigger the build process for your site.

Configuring Gentics Mesh

The plugins/netlify/config.yml file will be created during startup of the plugin. It contains information about netlify hooks.

plugins/netlify/config.yml

---
hooks:
- id: "5d544baaf196f9c20c979fba"
  projects:
  - "test0"

Each hook can also contain a list of projects for which it is active. The hook will only be triggered for projects which match up with the project of the content that triggered the event.

Omitting the projects list will create a global hook which will be triggered regardless of the project origin of the event.

Plugin API

Hooks can also be added / listed / updated / removed during runtime via the REST endpoints. Changing the hooks will automatically update the configuration file.

The API can only accessed with admin role permissions.

Return list of all hooks

GET /api/v2/plugins/netlify/hooks

Load a single hook

GET /api/v2/plugins/netlify/hooks/:hookId

Register new hook

POST /api/v2/plugins/netlify/hooks

{
    "id": "5d544baaf196f9c20c979fba",
    "triggerBranch": null,
    "projects": [
        "test0"
    ]
}

Delete registered hook

DELETE /api/v2/plugins/netlify/hooks/:hookId

Summary

With this plugin, you can modify content in Gentics Mesh, and whenever you publish or unpublish content, your Netlify-powered website will be updated automatically.

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

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