So been playing around with Strapi and enjoying it for the most part. Lets say I’m trying to put together a new (a) website, (b) spa.
My use case is need a front end for IOT network. So timescale db for the IOTs themselves, but what should the infra for the mktg funnel + spa for user functionality look like? In this context, had a few questions.
Q1: The front end is likely to be Gatsby. This is basically a blog. What is the smart way to do this, and why?
Should I (a) use strapi with the graphql plugin, and use @apollo/client to update the blog as the user hits publish? Or, (b) not use graphql from gatsby and then use the webhook mechanism to update strapi every time?
I’ve just started playing with strapi and graphql so some direction would be appreciated. I’m also having trouble finding info about how to implement the webhook on a digital ocean server or firebase etc.
Q2: How do most folks use strapi? Are you guys super focused on RESTful stuff only? Or for apps built in some other framework (seems odd that strapi does not support some form of pub/sub/subscriptions if this is the case)? Or is it used only for static site generation with a variety of front ends?
Q3: Assuming I went with Gatsby front end for a blog, and then has a separate Meteor (say, or some other SPA framework) app for SPA, would it make sense to offload a bunch of admin stuff from Meteor to Strapi?
Appreciate assist, just getting started so feel free to help out with links or something if easier. Thanks so much.
Can’t respond to questions Q1 & Q3, since I used strapi with a frontend only once and I already had the frontend written in Angular so I just changed the API URLs and refactored the requests a bit.
Q2:
Mostly I use Strapi as middleware between two or more systems.
A real use case where strapi helps me: I have around 10 online shops (WP + Woo) and I’m using strapi as a single admin panel for all of them. First, I’m getting all the orders/products/categories/comments in a single place. When I modify some data in strapi all changes are reflected in my online shops instantly. I’m also using it to automatically import products/update prices & stocks from my providers on all the websites.
While I can’t speak for anything on Gatsby as I’m not familiar with it at all, quite a few users are using REST or REST + GraphQL instead of just GraphQL only. We do know that we need to add in GQL subs and REST pub/sub options but it’s really just a lack of time and resources at the moment
I’ll be interested in the responses our community can provide here.
That is really useful to know. That is actually the way I’m planning on using strapi, but wanted a second opinion before assigning resources to it.
Just to give you some context of what I’m trying to do, I really like Strapi for the blog/mktng funnel/frontend website side. So far so good.
It gives me control, and everything is JS, so I don’t need to use different resources for frontend/app/backend, which is very useful tactically in early stage (of a project or startup - allows versatility in using my resources).
We are building out an Iot play, so the end user functionality will probably be a meteor app. Meteor does pub.sub nicely, and I need it to work with timescale db, which is optimised for continuous time logs (i.e. every single sensor). Designed nicely, it can be webapp & mobile app so really good fit.
The challenge is, we need client org admin somewhere. So clients have users within them, who have access to different Iot devices - where does this sit? I don’t really want it in a react native app with meteor middleware, because now the admin sits in a mobile app which is not ideal.
It would be super useful to have Strapi play this role, and first class support for pub/sub for all the admin-y stuff, so i just reuse the frontend website as a baby client facing admin app would totally be a reason to move off the community version as it plays nicely into the expanded role support.
Hope above makes sense. You guys are building a solid product, the work is very much appreciated and in an ideal world can pay you guys soon too. Thanks so much.
