Kentico Developer Flash #7 (2020-04-22)

[Simply007]

👋Hi Kentico GitHub community!

Since we are all stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we thought you might appreciate some positive news from the Kentico's open-source community so here goes!

JAMStack support

Gatsby

Gatsby Source Kontent v5

We've released a new major version of Gatsby Source Kontent source plugin. The new version 5 has been officially released on npm with some major bug fixes (and breaking changes as well).

Implementing search with Gatsby and Algolia

A very common requirement of any website is some form of site search. @rshackleton talks about how to use Algolia search with Jamstack site build using Gatsby.

Improve SEO of Gatsby & other JAMstack video lessons

Implementing a dynamic JAMstack site? Choosing the right DevOps platform? Improving SEO? How to unit test JavaScript, how to decide between React and Vue, and how to enable your website to run offline? These are some of the topics we talk about in our regular Twitch streams. Have you missed it? No worries, they are all recorded and available on our YouTube channel.

New starter for Gatsby and Kontent

Lumen is a minimal, lightweight, and mobile-first starter for creating blogs using Gatsby and Kentico Kontent. In a couple of minutes, you are able to run your own portfolio page or blog powered by Kentico Kontent.

Is Jamstack Suitable for Anything More Than a Microsite?

In a world where user experience reigns supreme, a lone stack stands out providing fast, secure and usable sites: the Jamstack. Jamstack sites, or static sites, are great for blogs and marketing focused sites, but what about when content needs to be dynamic? Can the Jamstack handle these scenarios?

How to make a static site dynamic

A static site seems like a good fit for a small and steady project, right? Like one that does not require any advanced features or interaction with users. But how can you leverage the performance benefits and still have your static site be dynamic, personalized, and interactive? Is that possible?

Kentico Rocks on JAMStack

@mcbeev and @OnyxPrime cover quickly how JAMStack is continuing to gain steam, but spend more time discussing the question of can JAMStack does other things besides just static websites. @mcbeev then demos a GatsbyJS implementation connected to Kentico Kontent that Team BizStream has been working on that is multi-channel.

Gatsby packages monorepo

@rshackleton also prepared a monorepo containing two extension packages for Gatsby Source plugin for Kentico Kontent.

• The first one (@rshackleton/gatsby-transformer-kontent-image) allows you to combine the functionality of gatsby-image with Kontent Image assets.
• The second one (@rshackleton/gatsby-theme-kontent) unifies configuration of the previous plugin with the Kontent Gatsby source plugin!

Adding eCommerce support to an existing Gatsby site with SnipCart

Video - @OnyxPrime walks through creating an eCommerce shop using GatsbyJS, Kentico Kontent and Snipcart in his longest, 5 hours, LIVE coding session on Twitch. You see the entire creative process as he works through design, creation, and troubleshooting when things don't always go as planned 😉. You can catch @OnyxPrime live every week on his Twitch channel Developers Garage.

Gatsby vNext

We are not stopping with Gatsby Source Kontent v5. The brand new version vNext is in development.

If you are eager to try it, feel free to do so right now! - It's SUPERFAST!

After checking out the new Readme, you could notice that the repository will contain a new vNext version of Gatsby Source Plugin AND also one more package - @kentico/gatsby-kontent-components including RichTextElement to help you with rich-text element resolution.

If you have already used one of the previous versions of Gatsby source plugin, you might find the Upgrade Guide useful!

And if you are feeling lost in these changes, be patient. The transition guide is on the way!

Sourcebit prototype

Sourcebit is a tool that connects multiple data sources, for example, data in a headless CMS like Kontent and transforms them into various formats suitable for multiple static site generators like Hugo, Jekyll, Or Next.js.

This command-line wizard shortens the time required by devs to configure their statically generated site powered by a headless CMS.

Do you want to make your hand dirty with a functional, non-production prototype? Your feedback is welcomed!

.NET

Our .NET Stack Hits an Important Milestone

Kontent's .NET resources are now fully compatible with .NET Core 3.1.

In the Delivery SDK, we took advantage of .NET's new features such as IOptionsMonitor, IMemoryCache, HttpClientFactory in the SDK which will ultimately make your apps more versatile, robust, performant, and stable. We also managed to simplify the README, define best practices, and create a new standalone caching library.

Big thanks goes to @xantari who submitted about 20 issues and ideas for improvement over the past few months and was willing to jump on a call with us to further discuss the implementation details! Thanks to him, we've been able to update and significantly improve not only the .NET Delivery SDK, but also the .NET Code generator, and the ASP.NET MVC boilerplate!

You can also enjoy an updated sample app for ASP.NET Core MVC, and a brand new one for ASP.NET Core Razor Pages.

Our next steps will lead towards distributed caching and preparing for .NET 5!

Rendering AMP with MVC Display Templates in ASP.NET Core

@robertgregorywest shows how to use ASP.NET Core MVC display templates to render AMP HTML version of structured rich-text elements:
https://robwest.info/articles/how-to-render-different-output-for-rich-text-in-kentico-kontent-using-the-delivery-net-sdk

Kentico Rocks Podcast on Management API

@mcbeev walks you through the Management API (MAPI) basics, differences between MAPI v1 and v2, and how to use MAPI SDK in the latest episode of the Kentico Rocks Podcast:

Others

Custom element sample library's got a fresh new design!

Custom element sample library got the redesign!

How do you like the search capabilities? How can we further improve it? Let us know down in the comments.

Developer resources page is out

Were you looking for one place you could use as a guidepost for Kentico-related resources?

Now you found it!

Thanks to our MVPs and mainly @seangwright there is a new Developer resources page.

If you have another resource, feel free to submit a pull request to the Kentico Home repository.

Push notifications from Kontent for Express.jS

Sending push notifications is a great way to let your customers know about promotions, items they may be interested in, things they left in their shopping cart, and so much more! But, if an editor wants to send a push notification, they’ll need a simple way to accomplish this without needing to know any code.

Check out the new article Sending Push Notifications from Kontent from @kentico-ericd.

That's it!

Ok, that's quite an extensive list of news. It gets longer and longer each time. Shall we release this bullet-in more often? Let us know in the discussion.