The Content Manager and Content-Types
Learn about Strapi's content-types and how to manage these collections with the Content Manager.
We'll cover the following
The Content Manager is one of Strapi’s default plugins. A Strapi plugin is a bit of code that allows us to add custom features to our application. This is where all the content of the application is visible and can be updated, viewed, and/or deleted. The Content Manager is only visible to the application's administrators.
Please use the coding playground below to run Strapi and look at the Content Manager:
Note: A Strapi administrator user has already been created for this course. The details of the user are as follows:
Email: jane.doe@email.com
Password: Password123
HOST=0.0.0.0 PORT=8080 APP_KEYS=YKyG6KHVEpxux+q84tawOg==,v6HodGsO5I8VCDdNiRsyxA==,2CfKUQVZC+dlkVg0eVPQzw==,t70y3AabGKWr3Qg5phzu7Q== API_TOKEN_SALT=x378kwbg8kDCdk+cuurAoA== ADMIN_JWT_SECRET=D9PLucLcKwDWWo1VY6pVaA== JWT_SECRET=LLhOydsWtKUkvc6dISnBSw==
The Content Manager can be accessed from the navigation panel on the left side of the Strapi admin panel. When we open our Content Manager for the first time, our UI looks like this:
Content-types
Content-types in Strapi are what we would call schemas, or the format of the document where our data will be saved. Strapi provides us with two main content-types: collection types and single types.
Collection type
A collection type can have multiple entries and has two views—the list view and the edit view. The list view is where we can view all the entries of the content-type that we have selected in the navigation. The edit view is where we can add new entries to the content-type from the admin panel. When we open our Content Manager for the first time, it opens in the list view.
What we see above is the list view, but we don’t see any content because we don't have any in the selected collection. Let’s add a sample user to the content to see how we can create content from the admin panel. When we click the “Create new entry” button, we’ll be redirected to the edit view of this content-type:
Now that we have an entry in the list view visible, let’s discuss a few things we can do in this view of the Content Manager:
We can create new entries with the “Create new entry” button.
We can search the list with the “Search” button.
We can use the “Filters” drop-down menu to filter the list to our requirements.
We can select visible fields with the “X currently selected” drop-down menu.
We can configure the view with the “Configure the view” button, which displays the “Settings" icon.
With these features, we can easily create and query our content based on our requirements, making it efficient and easy to meet our application’s back-end requirements by providing an easy-to-use admin interface.
Single type
Single types, as the name would suggest, can only be used to store a single default entry. Because there’s only one entry and not multiple entries, there isn’t a list view for single types.
Selecting a single type will redirect you to the edit view, where you will be able to write the content of the single type. This is what the single type edit view looks like:
