⚠️ This feature is currently in alpha for selected customers.

Content Source Maps

Automatically add inspector mode to visual fields such as short text, rich text and assets, eliminating the time and effort required for manually inserting data attributes.

Installation

Install the Live Preview SDK:

npm install @contentful/live-preview

How it works

The Live Preview SDK transforms the Content Source Maps coming from either the GraphQL API or Content Preview API (REST) into hidden metadata. This process employs steganography to conceal metadata within invisible Unicode characters, containing information to activate inspector mode. These invisible Unicode characters will not alter the visual presentation of your content.

GraphQL

1. Setting Up GraphQL Queries

Enable Content Source Maps in your GraphQL queries as follows:

query @contentSourceMaps {
  postCollection(preview: true) {
    items {
      title
    }
  }
}

The GraphQL API will now return the data along with the Content Source Maps in the extensions field.

2. Processing GraphQL Response

Then, pass the data to the provided function encodeGraphQLResponse to encode the response:

import { encodeGraphQLResponse } from '@contentful/live-preview';

const dataWithAutoTagging = encodeGraphQLResponse(data);

When rendering the encoded data in your website, inspector mode will activate automatically.

REST (Content Preview API)

1. Enable Content Source Maps for the CPA

To enable Content Source Maps using the Contentful Client SDK, simply enable withContentSourceMaps in the client:

export const clientPreview = createClient({
  space: process.env.CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID!,
  accessToken: process.env.CONTENTFUL_PREVIEW_ACCESS_TOKEN!,
  host: "preview.contentful.com",
  alphaFeatures: {
    withContentSourceMaps: true
  }
});

The CPA will include Content Source Maps within the sys object of the response.

2. Processing CPA Response

Then, pass the data to the provided function encodeCPAResponse to encode the response:

import { encodeCPAResponse } from '@contentful/live-preview';

const dataWithAutoTagging = encodeCPAResponse(data);

When rendering the encoded data in your website, inspector mode will activate automatically.

Troubleshooting / Tips

• Under certain circumstances, such as when applying letter-spacing in CSS, fields may display styles that weren't intended. In these cases, you can utilize the splitEncoding function provided by the Live Preview SDK to retrieve the content and remove any hidden metadata.

  import { splitEncoding } from '@contentful/live-preview';
  
  const { cleaned, encoded } = splitEncoding(text);

• Images will get automatically tagged if you provide an alt attribute with the asset title or description.

• To stop using manual tags while using Content Source Maps:

  <ContentfulLivePreviewProvider experimental={{ ignoreManuallyTaggedElements: true }} />

Limitations

• Markdown support is currently in development.
• Adding hidden metadata to content can result in problems, e.g. when being used for CSS values, for dates or URL content. You can remove the hidden strings using the splitEncoding function from the Live Preview SDK.
• Hidden strings will not be generated for fields that end with numeric values.