Strapi Preview Button

A plugin for Strapi CMS that adds a preview button and live view button to the content manager edit view.

Get Started

• Features
• Installation
• Configuration
• Plugin Options
• Extending
• User Guide
• Troubleshooting
• Migration
• Support or Donate
• Roadmap

✨ Features

• Adds a new button in content manager sidebar which links the user to a preview or live view of a frontend app.
• Optional column in a collection's list view containing "preview" and "copy link" buttons.
• Optional button to copy the preview link to your clipboard.
• Customize which content types should use the preview button.
• Customize endpoints for draft and published URLs.
• Map values from an entry's data into preview URLs.
• Supports collection and single types.
• Supports localization with the @strapi/plugin-i18n plugin.

💎 Installation

yarn add strapi-plugin-preview-button@latest

Don't forget to restart or rebuild your Strapi app when installing a new plugin.

🔧 Configuration

contentTypes

An array of objects describing which content types should use the preview button.

Each object in the array requires the uid as well as draft and/or published props, which require a url prop at minimum.

Example

Consider we have a Home single type as well as Page and Post collection types, where each has a simple title and content field. The Page and Post models will also use a uid field named slug so they can create many entries with unique paths. Here is the minimum recommended config for this scenario.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2'use strict';
3
4module.exports = {
5  'preview-button': {
6    config: {
7      contentTypes: [
8        {
9          uid: 'api::home.home',
10          published: {
11            url: 'http://localhost:3000',
12          },
13        },
14        {
15          uid: 'api::page.page',
16          draft: {
17            url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
18            query: {
19              type: 'page',
20              slug: '{slug}',
21            },
22          },
23          published: {
24            url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
25          },
26        },
27        {
28          uid: 'api::post.post',
29          draft: {
30            url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
31            query: {
32              type: 'post',
33              slug: '{slug}',
34            },
35          },
36          published: {
37            url: 'http://localhost:3000/blog/{slug}',
38          },
39        },
40      ],
41    },
42  },
43};

In this example, the Home page is a single type and does not have draftAndPublish enabled so we do not use the draft prop.

For Pages and Posts, the slug value from the entry data is dynamically populating into the url and query props. This allows you to populate any number or string property from the entry data into the preview URL by using curly braces around the property name.

This configuration will result in the following preview URLs for Home, Pages, and Posts.

1// Draft URLs
2http://localhost:3000/api/preview?slug=my-page&type=page
3http://localhost:3000/api/preview?slug=my-post&type=post
4
5// Published URLs
6http://localhost:3000/
7http://localhost:3000/my-page
8http://localhost:3000/blog/my-post

The query prop can actually take any params you want to pass to your frontend app.

Mapping values from entry data into preview URLs

By using {curly_braces}, you can map values from the entry data into your preview URLs to customize the URL however you like.

For example, depending on how you are choosing to handle your preview method, you could pass an id value to your draft preview but pass a slug value to your live view.

Unmatched values will be replaced with an empty string.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2{
3  uid: 'api::page.page',
4  draft: {
5    url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
6    query: {
7      type: 'page',
8      id: '{id}',
9    },
10  },
11  published: {
12    url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
13  },
14}

Use with localization enabled

If you have localization enabled for a content type, the locale value will be included in the entry data and replaced like the rest. You can simply use {locale} to include it where you like in the URL or query string.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2{
3  uid: 'api::page.page',
4  draft: {
5    url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
6    query: {
7      type: 'page',
8      locale: '{locale}',
9      slug: '{slug}',
10    },
11  },
12  published: {
13    url: 'http://localhost:3000/{locale}/{slug}',
14  },
15}

Use a secret key with preview URLs

You can optionally use a secret key with your preview URLs by taking advantage of environment vars and the query prop. See example below.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2'use strict';
3
4module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
5  'preview-button': {
6    config: {
7      contentTypes: [
8        {
9          uid: 'api::page.page',
10          draft: {
11            url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
12            query: {
13              type: 'page',
14              slug: '{slug}',
15              secret: env('STRAPI_PREVIEW_SECRET'),
16            },
17          },
18          published: {
19            url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
20          },
21        },
22      ],
23    },
24  },
25});

This configuration will result in the following preview URLs for Pages.

1// Draft URL
2http://localhost:3000/api/preview?slug=my-page&type=page&secret=YOUR_SECRET_KEY
3
4// Published URL
5http://localhost:3000/my-page

Before granting access to the preview in your frontend app, you will want to compare and validate the secret key between both Strapi and frontend apps.

It may be important to note that this plugin does not offer any validation or other handling for a secret key. The goal of including a secret key is simply to give your frontend app some way of "shaking hands" with your backend app to approve of the preview access.

Opening preview links in different tabs

By default this value is set to StrapiPreview but it can be any custom string. It is used in the window.open function for the preview button to always open in the same tab.

If you would rather have the preview button always open in a new tab, you could use _blank as the value. Special target keywords such as _blank, _top, _self, or _parent are also acceptable values.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2{
3  uid: 'api::page.page',
4  draft: {
5    url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
6    query: {
7      type: 'page',
8      slug: '{slug}',
9    },
10    openTarget: '_blank',
11  },
12  published: {
13    url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
14    openTarget: '_blank',
15  },
16},

You could also use a different openTarget for each model schema if you wanted to have each collection type open in it's own designated tab or window, like in the example below.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2'use strict';
3
4module.exports = {
5  'preview-button': {
6    config: {
7      contentTypes: [
8        {
9          uid: 'api::page.page',
10          draft: {
11            url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
12            query: {
13              type: 'page',
14              slug: '{slug}',
15            },
16            openTarget: 'StrapiPreviewPage',
17          },
18          published: {
19            url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
20            openTarget: 'StrapiPage',
21          },
22        },
23        {
24          uid: 'api::post.post',
25          draft: {
26            url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
27            query: {
28              type: 'post',
29              slug: '{slug}',
30            },
31            openTarget: 'StrapiPreviewPost',
32          },
33          published: {
34            url: 'http://localhost:3000/blog/{slug}',
35            openTarget: 'StrapiPost',
36          },
37        },
38      ],
39    },
40  },
41};

Disable copy link button

The "copy link" button located beneath the preview button can be disabled with the copy: false prop applied to draft and published configurations. This value is true by default.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2{
3  uid: 'api::home.home',
4  published: {
5    url: 'http://localhost:3000',
6    copy: false,
7  },
8}

Always render preview and live buttons together

In published mode, the preview button changes to a "live view" button. If you want to keep the preview button alongside the live view button in published mode, set draft.alwaysVisible to true.

In draft mode, the live view buttons will not appear.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2{
3  uid: 'api::page.page',
4  draft: {
5    url: 'http://localhost:3000/api/preview',
6    query: {
7      type: 'page',
8      slug: '{slug}',
9    },
10    openTarget: 'StrapiPreviewPage',
11    alwaysVisible: true,
12  },
13  published: {
14    url: 'http://localhost:3000/{slug}',
15    openTarget: 'StrapiPage',
16  },
17}

🔌 Plugin Options

listViewColumn

Set to false to disable the preview and copy link buttons from displaying in list view.

1// ./src/api/page/content-types/page/schema.js
2{
3  "kind": "collectionType",
4  "collectionName": "pages",
5  "info": {
6    "singularName": "page",
7    "pluralName": "pages",
8    "displayName": "Page",
9    "description": ""
10  },
11  "options": {
12    "draftAndPublish": true
13  },
14  "pluginOptions": {
15    "preview-button": {
16      "listViewColumn": false
17    }
18  },
19  "attributes": {
20    // etc.
21  }
22}

Ideally, the preview and copy link buttons in list view should appear alongside the other action icons for each row in the table. However, Strapi does not currently provide a hook to append new icons to that column. For now, this plugin will add its own "Preview" column with the extra icon actions.

🔩 Extending

If you need to apply more advanced logic to the preview URL, you can accomplish this with the plugin/preview-button/before-build-url hook included with this plugin.

Your Strapi app will need a custom plugin in order to use this hook.

See Plugins Development in Strapi docs for more info.

Example

In this example, we will create the bare minimum for a Strapi plugin that allows us to run our custom hook. The file structure for the plugin will look like the code below.

1/src/plugins/example
2  /admin
3    /src
4      index.js
5  package.json
6  strapi-admin.js

The package.json is required for a Strapi plugin.

1// ./package.json
2{
3  "name": "example",
4  "version": "0.1.0",
5  "description": "Example.",
6  "strapi": {
7    "displayName": "Example",
8    "name": "example",
9    "description": "Example",
10    "kind": "plugin"
11  },
12  "dependencies": {}
13}

1// ./strapi-admin.js
2'use strict';
3
4module.exports = require('./admin/src').default;

In the main plugin file below, we register the plugin in the register method and we register the hook with the bootstrap method.

The hook provides draft and published parameters which are the same as the UID configs from config/plugins.js. So if you are editing a Page, you will get the draft and published configs for api::page.page from your plugin config passed into the callback.

Here you will modify and return draft and published while using data however you like. In this example, we are just adding on a foo=bar query parameter to demonstrate how this hook can be utilized for more dynamic URLs.

1// ./admin/src/index.js
2export default {
3  register(app) {
4    app.registerPlugin({
5      id: 'example',
6      name: 'example',
7    });
8  },
9
10  bootstrap(app) {
11    app.registerHook('plugin/preview-button/before-build-url', ({ data, draft, published }) => {
12      const draftQuery = draft?.query ?? {};
13
14      // Return an object with modified `draft` and `published` props using `data` however you like.
15      return {
16        draft: {
17          ...draft,
18          query: {
19            ...draftQuery,
20            foo: 'bar',
21          },
22        },
23        published,
24      };
25    });
26  },
27};

Finally, don't forget to enable your plugin in your app by adding it to config/plugins.js.

1// ./config/plugins.js
2'use strict';
3
4module.exports = {
5  example: {
6    enabled: true,
7    resolve: './src/plugins/example',
8  },
9};

📘 User Guide

How does this work with my frontend app?

The Open live view button will lead directly to the live page URL.

The Open draft preview button should lead to an endpoint that redirects to the appropriate preview page based on the query parameters passed to it.

For in-depth examples and instructions, please reference the links below to learn how this can be accomplished with Next.js and Strapi.

• Next.js Preview Mode
• Next.js Preview Mode example with Strapi

💩 Troubleshooting

In general

Remember to rebuild your app after making changes to some config or other code.

yarn build
# OR
yarn develop

🚌 Migration

Follow the migration guides to keep your preview button plugin up-to-date.

❤️ Support or Donate

If you are enjoying this plugin and feel extra appreciative, you can buy me a beer or 3 🍺🍺🍺.

🚧 Roadmap

• Custom validation hook.
• RBAC support.