This Gatsby starter is intended for use with Craft’s blog starter project as the back end. If you haven’t set it up yet, start with the root-level README to get Craft up and running. Be sure to follow the instructions in the headless section.
Note
This guide assumes that your main project is running in a DDEV environment, and Gatsby is running on the host machine. Previews should work fine (this endpoint is requested from the browser), but you may encounter unusual behavior when using the “build” hooks, which require that Craft is able to reach the defined endpoint.localhost
means something different from inside a container!
We’ll assume you have Node.js and npm (or yarn) installed and have a basic understanding of Node development.
Gatsby development requires that you have Gatsby CLI installed.
npm install -g gatsby-cli
Make sure you’re in this /headless-front-end/gatsby
directory in your terminal, then run:
npm install
Craft should be running under the Pro edition to enable GraphQL support. Before proceeding, make sure you have completed the steps in the headless section of the root-level README.
- Log into Craft’s control panel and go to GraphQL → Schemas.
- Create a new schema.
- Name the schema, set permissions, enable Allow discovery of sourcing data for Gatsby, and copy the auto-generated token before you save it.
In this gatsby
directory, make a copy of .env.example
named .env
.
cp .env.example .env
Update the .env
file:
CRAFTGQL_TOKEN="[[ Insert the token you got from Craft’s control panel! ]]"
CRAFTGQL_URL=https://starter-blog.ddev.site/api
The /api
endpoint route is set up in Craft’s config/routes.php
file.
If you’re using Craft’s live preview feature with Gatsby, you’ll also need to add one more line to your .env
file:
ENABLE_GATSBY_REFRESH_ENDPOINT=true
For more in-depth setup instructions, see our official Gatsby Source plugin.
Now that everything is configured, you can get off to the races by running:
gatsby develop
When you’re ready to compile for production, run:
gatsby build
Refer to the package.json
file for other scripts you can run.
A quick look at the top-level files and directories you'll see in a Gatsby project.
.
├── 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
-
/node_modules
: This directory contains all of the modules of code that your project depends on (npm packages) are automatically installed. -
/src
: This directory will contain all of the code related to what you will see on the front-end of your site (what you see in the browser) such as your site header or a page template.src
is a convention for “source code”. -
.gitignore
: This file tells git which files it should not track / not maintain a version history for. -
.prettierrc
: This is a configuration file for Prettier. Prettier is a tool to help keep the formatting of your code consistent. -
gatsby-browser.js
: This file is where Gatsby expects to find any usage of the Gatsby browser APIs (if any). These allow customization/extension of default Gatsby settings affecting the browser. -
gatsby-config.js
: This is the main configuration file for a Gatsby site. This is where you can specify information about your site (metadata) like the site title and description, which Gatsby plugins you’d like to include, etc. (Check out the config docs for more detail). -
gatsby-node.js
: This file is where Gatsby expects to find any usage of the Gatsby Node APIs (if any). These allow customization/extension of default Gatsby settings affecting pieces of the site build process. -
gatsby-ssr.js
: This file is where Gatsby expects to find any usage of the Gatsby server-side rendering APIs (if any). These allow customization of default Gatsby settings affecting server-side rendering. -
LICENSE
: Gatsby is licensed under the MIT license. -
package-lock.json
(Seepackage.json
below, first). This is an automatically generated file based on the exact versions of your npm dependencies that were installed for your project. (You won’t change this file directly). -
package.json
: A manifest file for Node.js projects, which includes things like metadata (the project’s name, author, etc). This manifest is how npm knows which packages to install for your project. -
README.md
: A text file containing useful reference information about your project.
Looking for more guidance? Full documentation for Gatsby lives on the website. Here are some places to start:
-
For most developers, we recommend starting with our in-depth tutorial for creating a site with Gatsby. It starts with zero assumptions about your level of ability and walks through every step of the process.
-
To dive straight into code samples, head to our documentation. In particular, check out the Guides, API Reference, and Advanced Tutorials sections in the sidebar.