Umbraco ContentAPI

What is it?

It's a package for Umbraco 10 that allows you to explore and fetch data from a standardized API. The aim is to follow the JSON Hypertext Application Language specification

But why?

Umbraco currently only supports GraphQL, and only on the cloud solutions. Some organizations prefer self-hosting but still want a CMS decoupled from their frontend. This package allows for that.

Okay. But how?

Quite simple. Setup a Umbraco CMS solution and install this package. You then add these two lines to setup ContentAPI.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    ...
    services.AddContentAPI(options => ...);
    ...
}
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
    ...
    app.UseContentAPI();
    ...
}

After this, and creating all of your content types and nodes etc., you can browse the /api/contentapi to get a HAL+JSON response with the structure for your data. You can then create a new project with a React, VueJS, Angular or something else and consume the API. Now your frontend and CMS are decoupled. The API can also be consumed by a mobile app or anything else that can make http requests.

Okay, but HAL+JSON is old tech. What about GraphQL?

Yeah, HAL+JSON was proposed back in 2012. But the tech is still solid and used by many larger organization - like Facebook. That being said there might be a option for GraphQL and Swagger somewhere down the road.

Okay. But I'm new to HAL+JSON. How does it work?

Well it's just like normal JSON, but with some more metadata and links. It is really easy. Come let me show you (TODO: insert link to getting started page)