Reader API

The Reader API is a Node.js API that lets you read Keystatic content from your file system.

⚠️

The code can only run on the server, and not in the browser.

Usage

First, import the createReader function, as well as your Keystatic config file:

*import* { createReader } *from* '@keystatic/core/reader'
import keystaticConfig from '../../keystatic.config'

You can then create a new reader by calling createReader and passing it two parameters:

  1. the path (relative to root) to the content files (as specified in the directory property of a given collection/singleton)
  2. the Keystatic config

Here’s an example:

const reader = createReader('', keystaticConfig)

The reader will now give you access to the following async functions:

For collections

You can get an array of slugs for a given collection with:

const slugs = await reader.collections.{collectionName}.list()

You can get the data for a specific collection entry with:

const entry = await reader.collections.{collectionName}.read(slug)

For singletons

You can get the data for a specific singleton with:

const data = await reader.singletons.{singletonName}.read()

Remember: this code cannot run in the browser, as it’s using some Node.js APIs.

Good places to use the Reader API are:

  • getStaticProps in Next.js
  • the frontmatter in Astro files
  • the loader() function in Remix

The Document field’s structured data

If you retrieve content from a document field in Keystatic, you’ll get a JSON object with structured data.

It can be a lot of work to turn this data object as HTML to render it on a page.

Luckily, Keystatic also provides a [DocumentRenderer component](https://www.notion.so/Renderer-API-6ac021fcabac42bf92eff3ba0ad07efc) that does all the heavy lifting for you, and is highly customisable.