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Revalidator

Automatically revalidate deep types

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Strapi plugin revalidator

This plugin is meant to create webhooks, but specifically for cache invalidations or page revalidations of your frontend applications.

In this plugin the word head is the head of your application. Of course Strapi is headless, but the frontends (heads) should still be updated when you update the data in strapi. By relying on caching in the heads, it can take a lot of workload off of your strapi instance.

This plugin let's you set up different types of heads and define rules for each of them for when a page or some content needs to be revalidated.

Features

Define multiple head types
Define rules for each head on how strapi should revalidate each content type
Define rules for how each content type should be revalidated based on relations
- Revalidate based on relations in fields and components
- Revalidate based on relations in dynamic zones
dynamic url builder
Use GET parameters
Use POST parameters
Manual revalidate button on content types
Heads defined from environment variables

Integrations with preview deployments: (Make sure strapi revalidates those too)
- Vercel
- Coolify

Plugin support / integrations

UI Navigation (see Integrations on this page)
url-alias

Getting started

Install the plugin

1npm i @oak-digital/strapi-plugin-revalidator

Configuration

The configuration has multiple parts.

The first thing to notice is headTypes. headTypes are used to describe the different types of heads for the application. One might be a nextjs frontend and another could be a mobile app cache or github pages.

headTypes should be a record, where the keys are the names of the head types used.

example:

1{
2  headTypes: {
3    nextjs: {
4      // ...
5    },
6    githubPages: {
7      // ...
8    },
9  },
10}

Fields

headTypes should define customizable fields which are used to configure your heads with specific fields. These fields can be used to prepare a url or headers for a revalidation request.

example:

1{
2  nextjs: {
3    fields: {
4      endpoint: {},
5      secret: {},
6    },
7  },
8}

`prepareFn: (strapi, fields, entry) => any`

each headTypes should also define which content types makes them revalidate. For example you might have a page content type that should revalidate when changed. You may also have designated pages for quotes or testimonials that needs to be revalidated in some other way.

To revalidate, you first need to prepare urls or whatever you need in the prepareFn. The prepareFn should return a state to be used for the revalidateFn. By default the revalidateFn will simply do a fetch based on the following fields from the returned state.

1{
2  url,
3  body,
4  params,
5  method,
6}

url is the url to request. body is the data that should be sent in the body. params is an object of query parameters that will be added to the url. method is the method that should be used to request, by default "POST" is used.

example:

1{
2  nextjs: {
3    // ...
4    'api::page.page': {
5      prepareFn: async (strapi, fields, page) => {
6        // ...
7        return {
8          url
9        };
10      },
11    },
12  }
13}

You may want to do something else than just making a request in the revalidation function. This can be customized by changing the revalidateFn. example:

1{
2  nextjs: {
3    // ...
4    'api::page.page': {
5      prepareFn: async (strapi, fields, page) => {
6        // ...
7        return {
8          url
9        };
10      },
11      // state is what is returned from prepareFn
12      revalidateFn: async (state) => {
13        // ...
14        fetch(state.url);
15      }
16    },
17  }
18}

Logging

Different log levels are available (none, info and debug)

none: revalidator will never log anything

info (default): Will log whenever something is revalidated and other useful info.

debug: extra logs mostly used for debugging.

It can be configured in the following way

1{
2  config: {
3    logging: {
4      level: "info",
5    },
6  },
7}

Full example

1export default ({ env }) => ({
2  revalidator: {
3    enable: true,
4    config: {
5      headTypes: {
6        myFrontend: {
7          // fields that can be configured
8          fields: {
9            endpoint: {
10              type: "string",
11            },
12            secret: {
13              type: "string",
14            },
15          },
16
17          // Define the revalidation rules for each content type
18          contentTypes: {
19            'api::page.page': {
20              prepareFn: async (strapi, fields, page) => {
21                const { endpoint, secret } = fields;
22                try {
23                  const finalParams = {
24                    url: page.url,
25                    secret,
26                  };
27                  const finalUrl = `${endpoint}?${qs.stringify(finalParams)}`;
28                  return {
29                    finalUrl,
30                  };
31                } catch (e) {
32                  console.error(e);
33                }
34              },
35              revalidateFn: async (state) => {
36                try {
37                  const data = await fetch(state.finalUrl);
38                } catch (e) {
39                  console.error(e);
40                }
41              },
42              revalidateOn: {
43                page: {
44                  ifReferenced: true,
45                  revalidationType: 'soft',
46                },
47
48                article: [
49                  {
50                    ifReferenced: true,
51                  },
52                  // {
53                  //   // This should probably be changed in later versions, so it doesn't run on ALL pages
54                  //   predicate(page, article) {
55                  //     return page.attributes.content.some((block) => block.__component === 'LatestArticles');
56                  //   },
57                  // },
58                ],
59
60                quote: {
61                  ifReferenced: true,
62                  revalidationType: 'soft',
63                },
64              },
65            },
66            'api::quote.quote': {
67              prepareFn: async (strapi, fields, quote) => {
68                const { endpoint, secret } = fields;
69                const finalUrl = `${endpoint}/quotes/${quote.id}?${qs.stringify({ secret })}`
70                return {
71                  finalUrl,
72                },
73              },
74              revalidateFn: async (state) => {
75                try {
76                  await fetch(state.finalUrl)
77                } catch (e) {
78
79                }
80              },
81            },
82          },
83        },
84      },
85
86      // Hard coded heads - this may be good for monorepos
87      defaultHeads: {
88        myFrontend: [
89          {
90            name: "My primary frontend",
91            // myFrontend's fields
92            fields: {
93              endpoint: env("FRONTEND_ENDPOINT"),
94              secret: env("REVALIDATION_SECRET"),
95            },
96          },
97        ],
98      },
99    },
100  },
101});

Integrations

UI Navigation

It is simple to revalidate all entries of a content type when a navigation item is changed: add the following to your revalidateOn object for the content type you want to revalidate.

1{
2  // your other revalidateOn contentTypes...
3  "plugin::navigation.navigation-item": {
4    revalidationType: "soft"
5  }
6}

example of revalidating page

1{
2  // ...
3  "api::page.page": {
4    prepareFn: () => {},
5    revalidateOn: {
6      "plugin::navigation.navigation-item": {
7        revalidationType: "soft",
8      },
9      // ... your other rules
10    },
11  },
12  // ...
13}

Development

To develop on this plugin first open a strapi project and navigate to src/plugins/ and clone this repo or your fork

cd src/plugins
git clone git@github.com:Oak-Digital/strapi-plugin-revalidator.git revalidator
cd revalidator

Install dependencies with the

npm install

Then to make sure the build is always up to date run

npm run develop

Add the following basic config to config/plugins.ts

1export default ({ env }) => ({
2  // ...
3  revalidator: {
4    enabled: true,
5    resolve: "./src/plugins/revalidator",
6  },
7  // ...
8});

In another terminal go to the root of your project and run strapi develop --watch-admin. This can probably also be run like the following depending on your setup.