Creating a Dynamic Next.js App with Strapi CMS

Next.js is a powerful framework for building server-side rendered React applications, but it can be a bit of a challenge to add a CMS to your app. In this tutorial, we will show you how to add a CMS to your Next.js app using Strapi, an open-source headless CMS. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a fully-functioning Next.js app that uses Strapi as a CMS.

Step 1: Install Strapi

The first step is to install Strapi on your computer. You can do this by running the following command:

npx create-strapi-app my-strapi-app

This command will create a new directory called “my-strapi-app” that contains the basic structure of a Strapi app.

Step 2: Start Strapi

Once Strapi is installed, you can start the server by navigating to the “my-strapi-app” directory and running the following command:

npm run develop

This command will start the Strapi server on port 1337. You can now access the Strapi admin panel by navigating to “http://localhost:1337/admin” in your browser.

Step 3: Create a new Content Type

The next step is to create a new Content Type in Strapi. A Content Type is a blueprint for a specific type of content, such as a blog post or a product. To create a new Content Type, log in to the admin panel and navigate to the “Content-Types Builder” page. From there, you can create a new Content Type by clicking on the “Create new collection type” button.

Step 4: Create some content

Now that you have a new Content Type, you can start creating some content. Go to the “Content Types” page, select the content type you just created and start adding some records.

Step 5: Connect Strapi to Next.js

To connect Strapi to Next.js, you will need to install the strapi-sdk-javascript package. You can do this by running the following command in your Next.js project directory:

npm install strapi-sdk-javascript

Step 6: Fetch data in Next.js

Now that you have connected Strapi to Next.js, you can use the strapi.js file to fetch data from your Strapi server. You can fetch data in a Next.js page by using the getStaticProps or getServerSideProps method. For example, you can fetch all the records of a specific content type by calling the find method of the Strapi SDK.

import strapi from 'strapi-sdk-javascript/node';

export async function getStaticProps() {
  const apiUrl = process.env.API_URL || 'http://localhost:1337';
  const strapi = new Strapi(apiUrl);
  const posts = await strapi.request('post', 'find', {});

  return {
    props: {
      posts,
    },
  };
}

Step 7: Display data in Next.js

Once you’ve fetched the data from Strapi, you can display it in your Next.js page by passing it as props to a component. For example, you can create a Post component that renders each post and then use it in your main page to display all the posts.

import Link from 'next/link';

const Post = ({ post }) => (
  <div>
    <h2>{post.title}</h2>
    <p>{post.content}</p>
    <Link href={`/post/${post.id}`}>
      <a>Read more</a>
    </Link>
  </div>
);

const Posts = ({ posts }) => (
  <div>
{posts.map((post) => (
<Post key={post.id} post={post} />
))}

  </div>
);
export default Posts;

Step 8: Deploying Strapi and Next.js

Now that you have your Next.js app connected to Strapi, you can deploy both the Strapi server and the Next.js app to a hosting service. You can use a service like Heroku or Vercel to deploy your Next.js app, and a service like MongoDB Atlas or AWS RDS to host your Strapi server. Make sure to update the API_URL in the Next.js app to point to the deployed Strapi server.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to add a CMS to your Next.js app using Strapi. You’ve seen how to install and start Strapi, create a new Content Type, fetch data from Strapi and display it in your Next.js app, as well as how to deploy both the Strapi server and the Next.js app. With this setup, you can easily manage your content in Strapi and display it in your Next.js app. you can use this as a starter and build on top of it.