Contenta is an API-first Drupal distribution which helps solve the complexity involved in decoupling Drupal with other technologies. Here's all you need to know about it.

1. In the Pursuit of
Headless with Contenta

2. Index
● What is Contenta?
● The transition from the traditional to the modern CMS
● How far has the community moved forward with Contenta?
● What makes Contenta ideal for a headless Drupal application?
● Reasons to opt for Contenta
● Drupal Reservoir vs Drupal Contenta
● Conclusion

3. What Is Contenta?
Contenta is an API-first Drupal distribution to ease the process of
decoupling.
The aim of Contenta is to -
1. Ease the pain of using, or simply trying, decoupled Drupal
2. Provide a standard API platform which is ready along with the
demo content.

4. The Need for Contenta

5. The Transition from Traditional to the Modern
CMS
On a very basic level, traditional CMS are inflexible when it comes to implementing new
delivery formats, created outside.
A Headless CMS focuses on:
● Facilitating the workflow and the collaboration between frontend and backend
● Organizing content in the repository (semantic, collections, taxonomies)
● Creation and presentation of content (including translations)

6. Transformation from Traditional to Modern CMS

7. How Far has the Community Moved Forward with
Contenta?
1. Virtual Postcards
In DrupalCon Nashville 2018 organizations presented a lot of interesting
things around VR. And one such stuff was Virtual Postcards.
The background reflected the text “Nashville and Bust” and the bust of the
person was seen floating in the foreground. This was done with Contenta.

8. 2. Interactive Web Application - Imagine Canada Grant Connect
Imagine Canada Grant Connect is a Canadian national charitable organization.
It is a data-rich and highly interactive web application.

9. What Makes Contenta Ideal for a Headless Drupal
Application?

10. ● JSON API
Contenta CMS not only provides JSON API but makes it a standard for exposing
data over endpoints.
● JSON API Extras
JSON APIs Extra allows you to change the default output provided by JSON API
module with disabling endpoints, changing data formats, JSON structure among
others.

11. ● JSON-RPC
JSON RPC helps in performing various Drupal actions such as clearing cache,
putting the site to maintenance mode via REST API.
● Consumer Image Styles
Gives the flexibility of Image styles in our Decoupled application.

12. ● Consumers
Consumer is helpful where we have various kinds of application, devices or
endpoint consuming our data. It helps in distinguishing between them at the
root level which is the time of a request.
● Contenta JS
Helps in cutting out the time taken by a request due to bootstrapping in
Drupal, since all your request will be served via Node Server instead of actual
CMS.

13. ● Decoupled Router
Decoupled Router helps in maintaining the structure by providing an endpoint
which resolves the exact entity path by showing right data on that particular page.
● GraphQL
It helps in exposing Drupal data over graphql schema and all the good things that
come with it.

14. Reasons to Opt for Contenta
● Free to Use
A fully Free Open Source Software, with a GPL v2.0 license. This means that you have
no limitations. No more pricing plans or a maximum number of requests. Anyone can
use it.
● Lightweight
Most the Drupal bootstrapping is bypassed in this process Request payload and the
response is also very less compared to Drupal’s REST API.

15. ● Documentation Available
It provides demo content to help you understand how it works. This can be removed
all in one click. Many consumers in different technologies can show you how easy is
to build a Contenta project.
● API-First
This implies that integrating different technologies flawlessly together is an out-of-
the-box functionality.
Not just this, being API first implies the ability to have control over the content and
presentation across different channels/mediums.

16. Drupal Reservoir vs Drupal Contenta

17. Drupal Reservoir vs Drupal Contenta
Reservoir is another Drupal distribution which provides similar functionalities as
Contenta. In fact, both Contenta and Reservoir are based on the same set of modules.
While Contenta brings with it extensive default content when installed (and which can be
disabled later) Reservoir comes with a clean slate, which is possible when you disable
content in Contenta.
Reservoir is simple but limited and Contenta is powerful but complex.

18. Conclusion
We are entering a new era of Drupal, where advances and experiments will be creating a
resurgence of interest within the community.
Keeping up with its goal to lower the barrier to entry for developing decoupled Drupal sites, it
is pushing Drupal to be what it is.

19. Connect with us to build awesome decoupled projects.
Drop a mail at hello@opensenselabs.com.

20. THANK YOU