How Contember works?

Contember Engine is a standalone server, which provides an extensive GraphQL API for your data - we call it the Content API. Contember API also provides, what we call a Tenant API which handles authentication and authorization, so you can control who and how can access your data.

There is also Contember Admin - an SDK for building custom management interfaces.

contember diagram

How the project looks like?#

No clicking, we believe the code is the best way to express your needs. You can also easily version the project in git, collaborate with team members and share or reuse.

First you have to tell Contember API, how your data model looks like. So you start defining your project schema. For the most simple blog, imagine it could look something like this:

// Post.ts

import { SchemaDefinition as d } from '@contember/schema-definition'

export class Post {
  title = d.stringColumn().notNull()
  publishedAt = d.dateTimeColumn()
  content = d.stringColumn().notNull()
}

We use TypeScript for schema definition.

Contember API then creates a table in a PostgreSQL database, where it stores all the data. To save a post using GraphQL API mutation do:

mutation {
  createPost(
    data: {
      title: "Hello world",
      content: "first article stored in Contember!",
      publishedAt: "2019-12-11T16:35:06"
    }
  ) {
    ok
  }
}

To fetch it later:

query {
  listPost(filter: {publishedAt: {isNull: false}}) {
    title
    publishedAt
  }
}

Of course, Contember API also works with complex structures and you can define any kind of relations between entities. Find out more in a chapter defining schema.

Later you can start building a management interface using Contember Admin. The post edit page will be as simple as this:

export const PostEditPage = (
    <EditPage entity="Post">
        <TextField field="title" label="Title" />
        <TextAreaField field="content" label="Content" />
        <DateTimeField field="publishedAt" label="Published at" />
    </EditPage>
)

Still interested? Check the quickstart and try it by yourself in just few minutes.