Decoupled Kit Overview
Decoupled Kit is a collection of utilities for building a decoupled front-end that sources data from a CMS back-end. Conceptually, a ‘“Kit” is a combination of a compatible CMS back end and JavaScript front end. For example, we have kits with WordPress + Gatsby, WordPress + Next.js, and Drupal +Next.js.
At a slightly lower level, Decoupled Kit is a series of CMS starter projects, front-end starter kits, and developer documentation. Let’s take a closer look at each of these focus areas.
Frontend
decoupled-kit-js Monorepo
The decoupled-kit-js monorepo is home to all of the open source starter kits and npm packages which provide a starting point for developers who want an out-of-the-box experience for headless WordPress and Drupal powered by modern JavaScript/TypeScript tools.
Starter Kits
All starter kits are mirrored to standalone GitHub repos available for consumption via your favorite tool that uses GitHub repositories as templates, like gatsby new or create-next-app. You will find the standalone repo for each starter at https://github.com/pantheon-systems/{name of starter}.
For example, the following command uses the next-wordpress-starter as a template with create-next-app:
npx create-next-app -e https://github.com/pantheon-systems/next-wordpress-starter
Read on for a brief overview of each starter. Check each starter's README.md for more detailed information.
Gatsby WordPress Starter
The gastby-wordpress-starter is a Gatsby app which consumes data from a WordPress backend with the WPGraphQL and WPGatsby plugins, and uses Gatsby as a Static Site Generator.
This starter implements:
Next.js Drupal Starter
The next-drupal-starter is a Next.js app which consumes data from Drupal with the JSON:API module, as well as some Drupal modules managed by Pantheon (see Drupal below for more information) and uses Next's Server Side Rendering.
This starter implements:
Next.js WordPress Starter
The next-wordpress-starter is a Next.js app which consumes data from a WordPress backend with the WPGraphQL plugin, and uses Next's Server Side Rendering.
This starter implements:
npm Packages
To help fetch data, set headers, or style markup from the CMS, we have developed a set of open source tools that are published to npm. These tools are used in the starter kits, and can be imported into any project.
Packages can be installed with your node package manager of choice. The following example uses npm to install drupal-kit and nextjs-kit as production dependencies in a node project:
npm i @pantheon-systems/drupal-kit @pantheon-systems/nextjs-kit
Read on for a brief overview of each npm package. Please see the README.md in each package's repo for more detailed information.
cms-kit
The cms-kit exports utilities used in both drupal-kit and wordpress-kit. Those utilities are re-exported from the CMS specific packages for use in the starters.
drupal-kit
The drupal-kit utilizes @gdwc/drupal-state, a TypeScript library for fetching and storing data from Drupal's JSON:API. @gdwc/drupal-state lives on https://drupal.org, and is maintained by the Decoupled Kit team along with members of the Drupal community. Please visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_state for more information on DrupalState.
drupal-kit exports a PantheonDrupalState class that utilizes some methods from cms-kit to efficiently fetch and cache data from Drupal on Pantheon.
wordpress-kit
The wordpress-kit exports a light wrapper around graphql-request which is used to make GraphQL requests to a WordPress instances using the WPGraphQL plugin.
It also exports a tailwindcss plugin which maps WordPress Block Editor styles to tailwindcss classes. Import the plugin into your tailwindcss config to see the Block Editor styles on your content sourced from WordPress.
nextjs-kit
The nextjs-kit exports shared components used in the Next.js based starter kits, as well as some shared helpers.
Backend
To facilitate the Frontend Starter Kits, we also maintain WordPress and Drupal projects as starting points for the CMS side of things. These templates are open source and include community and Decoupled Kit managed WordPress plugins and Drupal modules.
Read on for a brief overview of each project. Please see the README.md in each project's repo for more detailed information.
WordPress
Decoupled WordPress Composer Managed
Decoupled WordPress Composer Managed is a WordPress template designed to get you started with a headless WordPress instance. It includes a number of both community and Decoupled Kit maintained plugins including WPGraphQL, WPGatsby, and Pantheon Decoupled.
WordPress Pantheon Decoupled
The WordPress Pantheon Decoupled plugin helps to enable headless WordPress without any extra configuration needed by the user. The required plugins are installed and some sample content is included, like a post with an image and an example menu.
(Pre-Release) WordPress Pantheon Decoupled Preview
WordPress Pantheon Decoupled Preview enables preview of content on the frontend site with minimal configuration when used with our Next.js WordPress Starter. This plugin is in active development.
Drupal
Drupal Composer Managed
Drupal Composer Managed is a Drupal project meant to work with Pantheon's Integrated Composer build process.
Drupal Decoupled Preview
Drupal Decoupled Preview enables preview of content on the frontend site with minimal configuration when used with our Next.js Drupal Starter.
Decoupled Drupal Tools
Decoupled Drupal Tools include the pantheon_decoupled module and the pantheon_decoupled and pantheon_decoupled_umami_demo install profiles.