Payload Visual Editor Plugin

This plugin provides a visual editor, including a nice UI, for Payload.

Note
This plugin is currently under active development. Please check back periodically for updates.

Core features:

Adds a visual editor component to your collections and globals:
- Creates the visual editor UI in the Admin UIs edit view
- Handles the live data exchange with your frontend

Note
For the collections in which you use the visual editor, fields in the {admin: {position:'sidebar'}} area will be rendered below all other fields, in the "main" area or, if you are using tabs, in an extra tab called "More".

Installation

  yarn add payload-visual-editor
  # OR
  npm i payload-visual-editor

Basic Usage

In the plugins array of your Payload config, call the plugin with options:

// import plugin
import { visualEditor } from 'payload-visual-editor';

// import styles
import 'payload-visual-editor/dist/styles.scss';

const config = buildConfig({
  collections: [...],
  plugins: [
    visualEditor({
      previewUrl: () => `http://localhost:3001/pages/preview`,
      collections: {
        [COLLECTION_SLUG]: {
          previewUrl: () => `...` // optional individual preview url for each collection
        },
      },
      globals: {
        [GLOBAL_SLUG]: {
          previewUrl: () => `...` // optional individual preview url for each global
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
});

Options

previewUrl : ({ locale: string; }) => string | mandatory

A function returning a string of the URL to your frontend preview route (e.g. https://localhost:3001/pages/preview). The locale property can be used if needed for preview localization.
showPreview : boolean

Show or hide preview while opening an edit page the first time. After toggling, the state will be saved in localStore. Default: true
collections / globals : Record<string, { previewUrl?: ({ locale: string; }) => string; }>

An object with configs for all collections / globals which should enable the live preview. Use the collection / global slug as the key. If you don't want to override the previewUrl, just pass an empty object.

Localization

If you are using Localization with multiple locales, it can be very handy, to be able to adjust the preview URL based on the selected/current locale. You can pass locale to the previewUrl function in your payload config an place it, where your frontend needs it to be:

const config = buildConfig({
  collections: [...],
  plugins: [
    visualEditor({
      previewUrl: params => `https://localhost:3001/${params.locale}/pages/preview`
      ...
    }),
  ],
});

Frontend Integration in React / Next.js

In the next.js route which will handle your life preview use this code snippet to get the live post data of your collection directly from payload. In this case it's a collection with he name page.

const [page, setPage] = useState<Page | null>(null);

useEffect(() => {
    const listener = (event: MessageEvent) => {
        if (event.data.cmsLivePreviewData) {
            setPage(event.data.cmsLivePreviewData);
        }
    };
    window.addEventListener("message", listener, false);
    return () => {
        window.removeEventListener("message", listener);
    };
}, []);

You can now pass this to your render function and you can use all your payload collection data in there. For example like this:

return (
  <div>
      <header>
        <h1>{page.title}</h1>
      </header>
      <main>
        <div>
          <RenderBlocks blocks={page.content} />
        </div>
      </main>
  </div>
)

Development

This repo includes a demo project with payload as the backend and a simple website written in plain TypeScript. To start the demo, follow these steps:

Start docker and wait until the containers are up:

docker-compose up

Open another terminal and install root dependencies:

yarn docker:plugin:yarn

Install dependencies of the payload example:

yarn docker:example:cms:yarn

Run the payload dev server:

yarn docker:example:cms:dev

Open another terminal and install dependencies of the frontend example:

yarn docker:example:website:yarn

Start the dev server for the frontend:

yarn docker:example:website:dev

After changing collections, fields, etc., you can use yarn docker:example:cms:generate-types to create an updated interface file.
To connect with the node container, run yarn docker:shell.
To connect with the database container, run yarn docker:mongo.

pemedia/payload-visual-editor

pemedia

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