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Enabling templateless, data-only publishing in Content Manager

You can use the templateless, data-only publishing framework to publish content "as is" to Content Delivery, without rendering the content with a template. This leaves the data modeling and rendering to your web development team. To enable templateless, data-only publishing in Content Manager, you need only to ensure certain settings are selected in your schemas and ensure an appropriate Page Template is selected. Optionally, you can configure the recursion depth for link resolving. This topic summarized the settings that impact data publishing specifically.

Schema settings

The following schema types have properties that are specifically for templateless, data-only publishing:
  • Schemas (Component)
  • Multimedia Schemas
  • Metadata Schemas
  • Region Schemas
  • Embeddable Schemas

The properties are configurable in Content Manager Explorer and enable you to control whether content based on a schema will be published and indexed for search and GraphQL queries. The following table summarizes the options in the user interface and the general impact of selecting each one.

AreaOptionDescription
General tabEnable each Schema field to be made publishable when authors publish an item based on this SchemaWhen selected, enables you to individually select Schema fields to be made publishable through templateless, data-only publishing.

If you disable this option, the option to select individual fields disappears and thus none of the content of Components based on this Schema will be published.

Enable each Schema field to be made searchable for website visitorsWhen selected, enables you to individually select Schema fields to be made searchable through templateless, data-only publishing.

If you disable this option, the option to select individual Schema fields disappears, and thus none of the item's content is indexed when a user publishes an item based on this Schema.

Design tab Publish this field when you publish an item that uses this SchemaWhen selected, this field is included in the data published through templateless, data-only publishing.

With this option not selected, contents of the field are not included in any publish action.

Make this field searchable for website visitorsWhen selected, this field is indexed when data published through templateless, data-only publishing, and will therefore be searchable.

With this option not selected, contents of the field still get published (because publish option is selected), but the contents will not be queryable or searchable.

Note that there are some differences depending on the specific type of schema. For details on the options for each schema type, refer to the section and topics on creating schemas.

In addition to configuring through the user interface, you can also set the IsPublishable and IsIndexable properties on the schema (overall) and on individual schema fields (certain field types only).

Link resolver settings

You can set a system-wide recursion depth for resolving linked content items during the publishing of Pages, Components, Multimedia Components and Structure Groups. The Link Resolver Recursion Depth option is available from the main menu under Administration > Link Resolver Settings. This setting determines how deeply the Publisher service looks during publishing to resolve the content of linked Components, and it applies equally to explicit requests to publish items and to implicit requests that result from the resolving logic (such as from publishing a Publication or Bundle.

Data Publishing Page Template

Content Manager provides the Data Publishing Page Template as a default Building Block, created automatically with every new Publication that gets created. Unlike the default Page Template, this one contains no Template Building Blocks (TBBs) because templateless, data-only publishing does not require TBB functionality.

The published JSON

Content Manager publishes the following types of items in standard JSON format:

  • any Components that are published in the context of a publish transaction
  • any Pages that are published in the context of a publish transaction
  • a model of any Structure Group that contains any Pages that are published in the context of a publish transaction
  • any Schemas, Multimedia Schemas, Metadata Schemas and Region Schemas that are resolved during publishing
  • a JSON package file that describes the structure of the published JSON files listed above

As a result of being published as JSON, the content is available through the GraphQL endpoint of the Public Content API.

For details and examples on using GraphQL to access and use the published JSON, refer to the section on implementing