Content Delivery API

Introduction

Note: The use of Contentful is subject to the Fair Usage Policy and to ensure uninterrupted functionality of the shared-service infrastructure, adhere to Technical Limits.

The Content Delivery API (CDA), available at cdn.contentful.com, is a read-only API for delivering content from Contentful to apps, websites and other media. Content is delivered as JSON data, and images, videos and other media as files.

The API is available via a globally distributed content delivery network (CDN). The server closest to the user serves all content, which minimizes latency and especially benefits mobile apps. Hosting content in multiple global data centers also improves the availability of content.

You'll need a free Contentful account and Contentful space to get started. You can sign up here.

Note: CDA For MRDI customers, use API Base URL https://cdn-mr.contentful.com to request content. For more information on MRDI, please read our article here.
Note: For EU data residency customers, the Base URL is https://cdn.eu.contentful.com.

Basic API information

API Base URL https://cdn.contentful.com
This is a read-only API

Authentication

Any client requesting content from the CDA needs to provide an access token that has access to the environment you're requesting content from. For example, if you create an access token that only has access to the master environment of your space, you will not be able to use this token to access content from any other environment.

You have two options to supply the access token, either as an Authorization request header field, or as an access_token URI query parameter. The CDA implements the standardized OAuth 2.0 bearer token specification already supported by many HTTP clients.

You create access tokens in the APIs tab of each space in the Contentful web app. Our reference guide has more details on how authentication works with Contentful.

API rate limits

API Rate limits specify the number of requests a client can make to Contentful APIs in a specific time frame. Every request counts against a per-second rate limit.

There are no limits enforced on requests that hit our CDN cache, i.e. the request doesn't count towards your rate limit and you can make an unlimited amount of cache hits. For requests that do hit the Content Delivery API, a rate limit of 55 requests per second is enforced. Higher rate limits may apply depending on your current plan.

When a client gets rate limited, the API responds with the 429 Too Many Requests HTTP status code and sets the X-Contentful-RateLimit-Reset header that tells the client when it can make its next single request. The value of this header is an integer specifying the time before the limit resets and another request will be accepted. As the client is rate-limited per second, the header will return 1, which means the next second.

Example

The current rate limit for a client is the default 55 per second. Client: 85 uncached requests in 1 second

HTTP/1.1 429
X-Contentful-RateLimit-Reset: 1

Meaning: wait 1 second before making more requests.

Common resource attributes

Every resource returned by the Content Delivery API will have a sys property, which is an object containing system managed metadata. The exact metadata available depends on the resource type, but at minimum it defines the sys.type property.

Note: None of the sys fields are editable and you can only specify the sys.id in the creation of an item (If it's not a *space_).

Contentful defines the sys.id property for every resource that is not a collection. For example, a Space resource will have a sys.type and sys.id:

{
  "sys": {
    "type": "Space",
    "id": "yadj1kx9rmg0"
  }
}
Field Type Description Applies to
sys.type String Resource type. All
sys.linkType String Type of an entity the link is referring to. Links
sys.id String Unique ID of resource. All except arrays
sys.space Link Link to resource's space. Entries, assets, content types
sys.environment Link Link to a resource's environment. Entries, assets, content types
sys.contentType Link Link to entry's content type. Entries
sys.revision Integer Published version of resource. Entries, assets, content types
sys.createdAt Date Date and time a resource was published for the first time. Entries, assets, content types
sys.updatedAt Date Date and time a resource was published after an update. Entries, assets, content types
sys.locale String Locale of the resource. Entries and assets

Note: The revision field refers to the current number of published revisions of an entry. Find out more in the Content Management API documentation.

Sys properties - difference in meaning in Contentful APIs

Some of sys properties, while having the same label, render different kinds of data depending on the API. Please see the descriptions of these properties per API in the table below:

Property name per API Description
CMA CDA CPA
firstPublishedAt createdAt - Date and time a resource was published for the first time.
publishedAt updatedAt - Date and time a resource was published after an update.
createdAt - createdAt Date and time a resource was generated in the system.
updatedAt - updatedAt Date and time a resource was updated in the system.

Date and time format

Date and time must be formatted according to ISO 8601.

Important: When setting time, ensure to indicate timezone. With no timezone specified, UTC+0 is applied as a default one.

The table below displays the supported date and time formatting:

Data type Format Examples
Date only "YYYY-MM-DD" "2015-11-06"
Date + time "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss"
"YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sss"
"2015-11-06T09:45"
Date + time + timezone "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ"
"YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±[hh:mm]"
"2015-11-06T09:45:27Z"
"2015-11-06T09:45:27+00:00"
"2015-11-06T09:45:27-08:00"

Collection resources and pagination

Contentful returns collections of resources in a wrapper object that contains extra information useful for paginating over large result sets:

{
  "sys": { "type": "Array" },
  "skip": 0,
  "limit": 100,
  "total": 1256,
  "items": [ /* 100 individual resources */ ]
}

In the above example, a client retrieves the next 100 resources by repeating the same request, changing the skip query parameter to 100. You can use the order parameter when paging through larger result sets to keep ordering predictable. For example, order=sys.createdAt will order results by the time the resource was first published.

Reference

Spaces

All content and assets in Contentful belong to a space. You will generally have at least one space for a project, but use separate spaces for testing or staging.

Space

Each space has a name, a set of locales, and metadata about the space.

Get a space

Content types

Defining a content type is a fundamental step in powering your applications with Contentful. A content type consists of a set of fields and other information, read this guide to learn more about modeling your content.

Content model

Get the content model of a space

Content type

Get a single content type

Entries

Entries represent anything defined as a Content Type in a space.

Entries can have link fields that point to other entries or assets. You can learn more about links in our concept guide.

Entry object description

Entry object consists of the following top-level properties:

Field Type Description
metadata Metadata User-controlled metadata.
Note: Currently holds tags property, which contains list of tags assigned to an entry.
sys Sys Common system properties. For detailed description of properties, please refer to Common resource attributes.
fields Object Fields that are custom defined by a user through the definition of content types.
fields object in CDA and/or CPA includes locale only when it is specifically requested in an API call or when your content is synchronized via Sync API. Whenever locale is not included, the locale value in the entry object will be returned under the sys.locale property.

Entries collection

In the JSON response of a successful query, linked items are placed in the includes array, when not already fetched in the items array.

Note: Links in the Delivery API will always only resolve to published entries. Unresolved items will not be present in the includes array. The Preview API will include draft entries with the same caveat that unresolved links will not appear in the includes array.

Get all entries of a Space

Entry

The include array is not applicable while retrieving a single entry.

Get a single entry

Unresolved entries

When querying an entry collection that contains at least one unresolvable reference (for example, an entry that was referenced by another entry has been deleted, or the referenced entry is Archived or in Draft), an errors array is returned in the response. This also occurs when there are permission issues.

An example of the errors array in the response:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "sys": {
        "id": "notResolvable",
        "type": "error"
      },
      "details": {
        "type": "Link",
        "linkType": "Entry",
        "id": "2bhYOW3HpzPgLPCDdwRrUB"
      }
    },
    {
      "sys": {
        "id": "notResolvable",
        "type": "error"
      },
      "details": {
        "type": "Link",
        "linkType": "Entry",
        "id": "Q1GLCTVUJgxsz9gYXFnl4"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Assets

Assets are the binary files in a space. An asset can be any file type and are usually attached to entries with links.

You can localize assets by providing separate files for each locale. Assets which are not localized are available as a single file under the default locale.

When you query for entries which contain links to assets then all assets are included by default.

Asset properties:

Field Type Description
sys Sys Common system properties.
fields.title Text Title of the asset.
fields.description Text Description of the asset.
fields.file File File(s) of the asset.
fields.file.fileName Symbol Original filename of the file.
fields.file.contentType Symbol Content type of the file.
fields.file.url Symbol URL of the file.
fields.file.details Object Details of the file, depending on its MIME type.
fields.file.details.size Number Size (in bytes) of the file.

For image assets, the fields.file.url field will point to images.ctfassets.net. For other file types, it will point to assets.ctfassets.net.

For large image assets (greater than 20MB and other asset files greater than 10MB) use the downloads.ctfassets.net.

You can use query parameters to define the image size, cropping parameters and other options. Find out more in our Images API reference.

For video assets, use videos.ctfassets.net.

Assets collection

Get all assets of a space

Asset

Get a single asset

Asset keys

Asset keys are used when signing Embargoed Asset URLs. This feature is only enabled for spaces on Premium/Enterprise plans that have enabled Embargoed Assets.

Asset key

Create an asset key

To sign embargoed asset URLs, you need to create an asset key. Secure asset URLs delivered by the CDA, CMA, or CPA will have a host of (images,assets,videos,downloads).secure.ctfassets.net. They cannot be accessed without first signing the URL.

Signing an embargoed asset URL is accomplished by the following steps:

  1. Create an asset key for the space the asset URL belongs to. You must specify an expiresAt value, a Unix epoch timestamp in seconds, and this can be no more than 48 hours in the future.

  2. Create a JWT with the embargoed asset URL as the sub (JWT subject). Sign the JWT with the asset key's secret.

  3. Affix to the original embargoed asset URL the following query parameters:

    • policy - the asset key's policy
    • token - the JWT created in step 2
  4. You may affix other query parameters as well, for example when using the Images API. These do not impact the validity of the signed URL.

By default, a signed asset URL will stop functioning after the expiresAt value that was specified when creating the asset key. When generating the JWT, you may optionally specify an exp (expiry) that will cause the signed URL to be unusable at the specified expiry time. If a per-URL expiry is greater than the expiresAt value specified when creating the asset key, the asset key's expiresAt value will be used instead.

Locales

Locales allow you to define translatable content for assets and entries. A locale includes the following properties:

  • name: A human readable identifier for a locale. For example, 'British English'.

  • code: An identifier used to differentiate translated content in API responses. For example, 'en-GB'.

  • fallbackCode: The code of the locale to use if there is no translated content for the requested locale. For example, en-US. You can set it to null if you don't want a default locale. This can only be set via the API, and not with the web app or client libraries.

Locale collection

Get all locales of a space

The locales endpoint returns a list of all created locales. One will have the flag default set to true and is the locale used in the CDA, and you specified no other locale in the request.

Tags

Note: Currently, only a few of our client libraries support Tags. Please ensure you're using the latest version of the client libraries.

Tags help you to easily search for specific content in your environment.

Tags are environment-scoped which means that they exist within and are unique to an environment.

Only tags with visibility public are accessible via the delivery and preview APIs. To learn more about the different tag visibility options, see the tags visibility documentation in the management api reference page.


A tag includes the following properties:

  • name: A human-readable unique identifier for the tag

  • id: A unique identifier for referencing the tag

  • visibility: A sys property with value public that makes the tag accessible via the delivery and preview API

Tag collection

Get all tags

Returns all the tags that exist in a given environment.

Tag

Get a single tag

Returns a single tag based on the given identifier.

Tags on entries and assets

Note:

  • Entries and assets payload come with a metadata property. This metadata property has as its value a tags list. The tags list contains links to all the tags that exist on the entry or asset.

  • You can query for entries and assets by their tags. For entries, the search is across content types.

Get a single entry

Returns a single entry with a metadata property. The metadata property holds a list of tags.

The same behavior applies for assets.

Querying content based on a set of tags

The query parameter starts with metadata.tags.sys.id with operator [all].

Retrieve entries or assets that match a specific set of tag values

Returns a list of entries according to the specified set of tag IDs.

Querying content based on one or more tags

The query parameter starts with metadata.tags.sys.id with operator [in].

Retrieve entries or assets that match at least one of the specified tag values

Returns a list of entries according to one or more of the specified tag IDs.

Querying content based on the tag presence

The query parameter starts with metadata.tags with operator [exists].

Check the presence of a tag on entries or assets

Returns all entries that are assigned with tags.

This parameter value is case sensitive: “True” or “False” are not valid values.

Links are a powerful way to model relationships between content entries and assets. You can learn more about links in our concept guide.

Retrieval of linked items

When you have related content (e.g. entries with links to image assets) it's possible to include both search results and related data in a single request. Using the include parameter, you can specify the number of levels to resolve.

The maximum number of levels is 10. The API will throw a BadRequestError for higher values or values other than an integer. The default number, if the parameter is not specified, is 1. To omit linked items, specify include as 0.

If the standard items array has not already retrieved the linked entries, they will be in the includes.Entry array. Linked assets are inside the includes.Asset array.

Note: The include parameter resolves links between entries and assets within a space. Links between content types within a space are not included in the response.

Note: The include parameter is only available for the entry collection endpoint /spaces/{space_id}/environments/{environment_id}/entries.

Query entries

If you want to retrieve all items linked to a specific entry, the query URL should filter entries on their specific content_type, linking_field (field to link items) and entry_id from the target entry.

Query entries

Search parameters

You can use a variety of query parameters to search and filter items in the response from any collection endpoint including entries, content types and assets.

Content type

To search for entries with a specific content type, set the content_type URI query parameter to the ID you want to search for.

Note: When querying entries and using search filters based on fields or ordering by fields you must specify this parameter. You can only specify one value for content_type at a time.

Query entries

This example finds all entries of content type 'Product'.

Select operator

The select operator allows you to choose what fields to return from an entity. You can choose multiple values by combining comma separated operators.

For example, if you want to return the sys.id and fields.name of an Entry you would use:

/spaces/yadj1kx9rmg0/environments/{environment_id}/entries/?select=sys.id,fields.productName&content_type=2PqfXUJwE8qSYKuM0U6w8M

You can fetch the entire sys or fields object and it's sub-fields by passing it to the select operator. For example to omit the sys object:

/spaces/yadj1kx9rmg0/environments/{environment_id}/entries/?select=fields&content_type=2PqfXUJwE8qSYKuM0U6w8M

The select operator has some restrictions:

  • It is only applicable for collections of Entries and Assets, and with an Entry you must provide the content_type query parameter.

  • It can only select properties to a depth of 2. For example, select=fields.productName.en-US is not valid.

  • If you want to select a property for a specific locale, you need to combine the select and locale operators, e.g /assets/?select=fields.productName&locale=en-US.

  • You can select up to 100 properties.

  • If you use the select operator on an Entry with linked fields, only the content linked to a field you select will be returned.

If you provide an invalid property path, e.g fields.doesNotExist, Contentful returns a 400 Bad request containing the invalid property path.

Query entries

To select only the productName field of each entry.

Equality operator

You can search for exact matches by using the equality operator. This includes querying an entry by an ID value instead of retrieving the Entry directly, which allows you to include resolved links.

Note: Equality and inequality operators are not supported for text fields and you need to constrain search queries for fields with a content_type URI query parameter.

Query entries

To find all entries with the ID 5KsDBWseXY6QegucYAoacS (IDs are unique).

Inequality operator

Uses the [ne] parameter to exclude items matching a certain pattern.

Query entries

To return all entries, except those with the ID 5KsDBWseXY6QegucYAoacS.

Array equality/inequality

The equality/inequality operators also work with array fields:

  • Equality: If one of the items in an array matches the searched term, then it returns the entry.

  • Inequality: If one of the fields in an array matches the searched term, then the entry is not returned.

Note: As the query filters by a field, you need to specify a content type.

Query entries

This example finds all products tagged as accessories by matching fields.tags (an array) against a single value.

Array with multiple values

It's possible to use the [all] operator to retrieve entries matching a specific set of values (e.g. fields.likes[all]=flowers,accessories)

Query entries

To find all products tagged as flowers and accessories by using the all operator with fields.tags (an array) and the two values.

Inclusion

You can filter a field by multiple values with the [in] operator. When applied to an array value there must be at least one matching item. Similarly, when including a field value, you need to specify a Content type.

Query entries

To retrieve entries that match accessories and flowers.

Exclusion

You can filter a field by multiple values with the [nin] operator. When applied to an array value there must be at least one not matching item. Similarly, when including a field value, you need to specify a content type.

Query entries

To retrieve all products tagged as neither 'flowers' nor 'accessories'.

Existence

You can check for the presence of a field using the [exists] operator. It checks whether a certain field is defined (i.e. it has any value) or not.

If the field is not defined, it will not be present in the JSON payload and the operator will consider it non-existent.

You can pass true or false as a parameter depending on if you want to retrieve entries where the field exists (true) or does not exist (false). Please note that the parameter is case sensitive, True or False are not valid values.

Query entries

To retrieve all entries that have a value for field.tags defined.

Ranges

Four range operators are available that you can apply to date and number fields:

  • [lt]: Less than.

  • [lte]: Less than or equal to.

  • [gt]: Greater than.

  • [gte]: Greater than or equal to.

When applied to field values, you must specify the content type in the query.

Query entries

To retrieve entries updated since midnight of January 1st 2013.

You have available two flavours of full-text search:

How does global full text search work

There are cases where you want to find all the content resources which contain some particular words (search terms) but you don't know from which content type (for entries) or on which field those terms can be, so you can't use any of the field filters. For cases like these full-text search is the perfect tool for the job. With it you can find all the content resources which match your search terms in any of their text and symbol fields.

Full-text search can be used to find entries, assets or content types. For the remainder of this section we will refer to entries but the same principles and restrictions will apply to the other types.

All text (both regular and rich text) and symbol fields in all the locales in your environment will be looked up when doing a global full-text search.

How is an entry considered a match?

Before we explain how we identify matches to your search terms we have to explain how these terms are transformed before they are sent to the search engine. After the API has received your query, the input string is sanitized (i.e. some special characters are removed), tokenized (i.e. split into it's constituent parts) and normalized (i.e. guarantee that the tokens satisfy certain constrains, e.g. removing XML tags). Then each of the remaining search tokens is suffixed with a wildcard operator, which implies that full-text search at contentful is left-anchored.

When checking if an entry satisfies the search criteria, the search engine tests if all of the search tokens (i.e. the transformed search terms) can be found in any field in any locale in the entry. This means that an entry can be included in the result set due to matches in different fields and different locales or due to a match in just one field in just one locale. There is also no guarantee about the order in which the search terms can appear in the matching entries. A search for modern red house can be matched with entries which have those words in any possible order (e.g. red ... house ... modern, red ... modern ... house, etc.).

All this combined means that when you for example search for my cat is blue, the search engine will find all the entries where there are words starting with my and cat and is and blue:

  • A field with content like my cat is blue will match.

  • A field with content like my cat is red will not match.

  • A field with content like there is a catastrophic blueberries accident in my town will match.

  • A field with content like there is a caterpillar in my house will not match.

  • A field with content like this is a picture of a caterpillar and myself wearing a bluejacket will match.

  • A field with content like my cat is <b>blue</b> will match.

  • A field with content like my cat is <b class="blue">great</b> will not match.

  • An entry with a field with content like my house was blue and another field with content like there is a cat will match.

Check below the phrase full-text search section if you are interested on those entries where the given search terms can only be found in one field and in the same order as in the search input.

Check the full-text search on a field section if you are interested only on those entries where the given search terms are in only one field.

By default full-text search queries will take the search tokens and find all those entries where the tokens can be found in any field, in any locale and in any order. There are however cases where you might need a more restrictive search strategy and only get those entries where the matches are in the same order as you specificed in the search and in only one field. To achieve this you can wrap the search terms in double quotes (") to enable phrase search.

When you for example search for "my cat is blue", the search engine will find all the entries where the words my, cat, is and blue are found in that order in one field:

  • A field with content like my cat is blue will match.

  • A field with content like my cat is <b>blue</b> will match.

  • A field with content like blue is the color of my cat will not match.

  • A field with content like my caterpillar is blue will not match.

  • An entry with a field with content like my house was blue and another field with content like there is a cat will not match.

If you wish you can combine phrase search with the default full-text search behaviour. This can be useful to refine even more the result set. For example a search like "my cat is blue" summer london will match all those entries where the term "my cat is blue" can be found in just one field in one locale and where the terms summer and london can be found in any field in any locale present in the entry (including the field where the phrase was matched).

  • Full-text search is case insensitive and might return more results than expected.

  • A query will ignore search tokens with less than 2 characters.

  • When using full text search, make your search terms as specific as possible.

  • The [match] operator might return better results.

  • Use phrase search when possible as it has better performance.

  • For performance reasons it is recommended to use the equality search operator when searching for slugs or text IDs.

For more tips on using full-text search, see our Help Center article.

Query entries

To retrieve all entries containing the word 'design'.

Full-text search on a field

With the [match] operator you can do a full-text search restricted to the content of a specific field. The way full-text search behaves on one field is the same as in the global full-text search and the documentation for the global full-text search also applies here, with the particularity that matches on other fields of the entries or assets won't be considered. As with the global search, you can enabled phrase search if you wrap the input search terms in double quoutes (").

Query entries

To retrieve all entries which contain words starting with 'content' in the 'website' field.

You can use a proximity search on location-enabled content to find results in a specified geographical area.

Note: Queries that include exact coordinates can't take advantage of our caching layer. With many use cases it should be enough to round the coordinates to 3 decimal places (an accuracy of about 300m), 2 decimal places (an accuracy of about 1km) or more to improve your cache hit rates.

Query entries

A common use case for location search is to search for places close to the user's current position.

Use the [near] operator to show results closest to a specific map location and order the results by distance.

This will return all entries sorted by distance from the point at latitude=38 and longitude=-122.

Locations in a bounding object

When displaying content on a map it's more resource efficient to retrieve only content that is in the current visible map area. For these cases, use the within operator.

Similar to the 'near me' use case, this lets you search for locations that are within the specific area on the map and can be useful for finding related entries in the vicinity of another entry.

There are two ways to search for nearby locations.

1. Using a bounding rectangle:

To search for locations within a rectangle area object, use the structure field.center[within]=latitude1,longitude1,latitude2,longitude2, where:

  • latitude1 and longitude1 refer to the coordinates of the bottom left corner of the rectangle.

  • latitude2 and longitude2 refer to the coordinates of the top right corner of the rectangle.

2. Using a bounding circle:

The structure field.center[within]=latitute,longitude,radius will return entries included in the circle with fields.center of the given latitude, longitude and radius (in km).

Query entries

To retrieve entries where fields.center is within the rectangle with:

  • Bottom left corner: latitude 1, longitude 2.

  • Top right corner: latitude 3, longitude 4.

Links to entry

To search for entries which have a field linking to a specific entry, set the links_to_entry URI query parameter to the ID you want to search for.

NOTE: For most use cases it is more performant to query based on a content type's reference field if the desired content type is known. See Search on references for an example query

Query entries

To search for entries which have a field linking to a specific asset, set the links_to_asset URI query parameter to the ID you want to search for.

Query entries

Order

You can order items in the response by specifying the order search parameter. You can use sys properties (such as sys.createdAt) or field values (such as fields.myCustomDateField) for ordering.

Note: You must set the content_type URI query parameter to the ID of the content type you want to filter by. You can only use the following field types with the order parameter:

Name JSON Primitive Description
Symbol String Basic list of characters. Maximum length is 256.
Integer Number Number type without decimals. Values from -253 to 253.
Number Number Number type with decimals.
Date String Date/time in ISO-8601 format.
Boolean Boolean Flag, true or false.

The following field types do not support the order parameter:

Name JSON Primitive Description
Text String Same as symbol, but can be filtered via full-text search. Maximum length is 50,000.
Link Object See links
Array Array List of values. Value type depends on field.items.type.
Object Object Arbitrary object.

If you don't pass an explicit order value the returned collection items will be ordered descending by publication timestamp (sys.updatedAt) and ascending by id (sys.id). This means that recently published items will appear closer to the top and for those with the same publication timestamp the order will be based on the items' ids.

Query entries

To retrieve all entries ordered by creation date.

Reverse order

You can reverse the sort order by prefixing the field with a - symbol.

Query entries

To order results by the time of the last update, newest to oldest.

Order with multiple parameters

You can order items by specifying the order parameter with attributes(attribute, attribute2). Prefix the field with a - sign to reverse the sort order of the attribute.

Query entries

Limit

You can specify the maximum number of results as a limit search parameter.

Note: The maximum number of entries returned by the API is 1000. The API will throw a BadRequestError for values higher than 1000 and values other than an integer. The default number of entries returned by the API is 100.

Query entries

To limit results to 3 entries.

Skip

You can specify an offset with the skip search parameter.

Note: The API will throw a BadRequestError for values less than 0 or values other than an integer.

By combining skip and limit you can paginate through results:

Page 1: skip=0, limit=15 Page 2: skip=15, limit=15 Page 3: skip=30, limit=15 etc.

Query entries

To skips 3 entries.

Filtering assets by MIME type

You can filter assets by their MIME type group by using the mimetype_group query parameter. Valid groups are attachment, plaintext, image, audio, video, richtext, presentation, spreadsheet, pdfdocument, archive, code and markup. By default, the API will return all assets.

Query assets

To return only image assets.

Search on references

You can search for entries based on the values of referenced entries.

For example, if you want to find products of a particular brand, you can use search on references to find the products with one API request.

Structure of a query

Here's how the example above would look as a query:

content_type=2PqfXUJwE8qSYKuM0U6w8M&fields.brand.sys.contentType.sys.id=sFzTZbSuM8coEwygeUYes&fields.brand.fields.companyName[match]=Lemnos
  • First is the content_type parameter which you must include when you want to filter based on the values of the fields of entries of a certain content type.

  • Second is fields.brand.sys.contentType.sys.id=sFzTZbSuM8coEwygeUYes which you use to to filter on fields of entries from content type 2PqfXUJwE8qSYKuM0U6w8M.

  • Third is fields.brand.fields.companyName[match]=Lemnos which filters entries to those branded as 'Lemnos'.

Note: All filters on referenced entries are scoped with the path to the field that contains the reference. In the previous example that path is fields.brand.

You can search on multiple references at once and combine them into one singe API query with a series of field and value pairs.

Available nested filters

You can use the all, in, nin, exists, match, gt, gte,lt, lte, ne, near and within filters when searching on references. The semantics of these filters are the same as when you use them on a non referenced entry.

Restrictions

Searching on references has the following restrictions:

  • You can only search on references on fields which link to a single entry. Fields which hold references to many entries or fields with references to assets are not supported.

  • The maximum number of reference searches in one query is 2. A larger value will return an error.

Search on references

This example will return the Lemnos branded products.

Localization

Retrieve localized entries

You can specify a locale for entries using the locale URI query parameter.

The locale parameter must be the code of a locale in the space you're querying, or the wildcard value *. If you don't specify a locale, the default locale of the space is used.

If there's no content available for the requested locale the API will try the fallback locale of the requested locale.

For example you have the de-CH (Swiss German) locale and configure it to fallback to de-DE (German). When you request content for de-CH any missing field in that locale will be replace with its fallback value in de-DE (if they exist). For more information about locale fallbacks read the locale section of the CMA docs.

When you specify locale=*, field values are nested in an object with keys corresponding to each locale with a defined value. Instead of writing fields.productName when accessing the response data from your code, use fields.productName[localeCode].

If the result contains only a single locale, resources will include the property sys.locale indicating the locale of that object.

Learn more about locales in our concepts document.

Query entries

fields.productName is the only localized field in the product content type, so returns all other fields in the default locale.

Resource Links are part of the Cross-space references feature set that allows you to link content across multiple spaces. It mainly uses ResourceLink links as a way to represent a relationship between entities from different spaces.

ResourceLink links are represented as a sys object containing urn, linkType and type:

Property Description
sys.linkType Represents what kind of entity this resource links to. For cross-space entries the value is Contentful:Entry.
sys.type The type of Link. ResourceLink is the default for cross-space resources.
sys.urn The location of the resource. A CRN to a Contentful environment entity.

As they are part of another space, resolving cross-space linked entities requires a special header to be passed in each request named x-contentful-resource-resolution.

Extra header for cross-space resolution

The x-contentful-resource-resolution header is a base64 encoded JSON object containing key-value pairs of spaceId/API Key. The plain JSON used to create the header should have the following shape:

{
    "spaces": {
        "someSpaceId": "<cda-token>",
        "anotherSpaceId": "<cda-token>"
    }
}

That then needs to be stringified and encoded to base64. You can use JSON.stringify and btoa (JavaScript) to properly convert the JSON object to a stringified encoded version of it.

Here is a full example in JavaScript:

const extraTokens = {
  "spaces": {
    "IdToR3s0lv3": "ND63YKcYBe335RWDnIuzv...",
    "4n0th3rSp4c3": "UuVe6icuBuXv..."
  }
}

// Converts object to string and uses base64 to encode the string
window.btoa(JSON.stringify(extraTokens)) // eyJzcGFjZXMiOnsiSWRUb1I[...]=

The value can then be passed to the x-contentful-resource-resolution header as-is. All cross-space references of matching space IDs will be returned within the includes property of the response.

Capabilities

  • The locale query parameter is propagated to all extra spaces present in the new header.

  • Only the first level of references of every extra space in the new header will be resolved. It applies to only one level of space. This is a behavior similar to include=1.

  • The main space (space Id being requested in the URL) will still resolve up to 10 levels.

  • Publishing new content in any of the extra spaces will cause the cache to be purged on every request that included that space Id.

  • The includes property of the response will include both cross-space entries and assets.

  • You can pass this new header in the Javascript SDK for automatic resolution.

Errors

Errors from cross-space requests are propagated back to the response payload in the errors property. If a request to a single cross-space fails, the main space request and other spaces will still continue to process.

HTTP Status Code Description
401 Missing Authorization header
400 Incorrect format for the x-contentful-resource-resolution header.
400 Number of extra spaces in the header exceeds the maximum allowed number (3)
Errors property example
{
    "errors": [
        {
            "details": {
                "urn": "crn:contentful:::content:spaces/<spaceId>/environments/<environmentId>/entries/<entryId>",
                "linkType": "Contentful:Entry",
                "type": "ResourceLink"
            },
            "sys": {
                "id": "notResolvable",
                "type": "error"
            }
        }

    ]
}

Limitations

  • Up to 4 spaces to be resolved in a single request

  • Only 3 extra space tokens are supported. You can make a single API call that resolves up to 4 spaces at the same time: 3 extra spaces and the entries from the space Id in the initial request.

  • Up to 1000 references in the includes property in the response.

  • Only the first level of cross-space references is resolved from the original spaceId in the URL

  • The Authorization header is still required for every request and it should enable access to the main space Id in the URL.

  • Errors from the extra space tokens will be returned in the errors property of the response.

  • Using the new header will also consume the Rate Limiting from the space Ids present in it when the request is uncached.

  • No Advanced Caching support

  • No MRDI support

For more information, see the Resource Links FAQs.

Notes:

  • The include parameter resolves links between entries and assets within a space. Links between content types within a space are not included in the response.

  • The include parameter is only available for the entry collection endpoint /spaces/{space_id}/environments/{environment_id}/entries.

Query entries

Synchronization

The Sync API allows you to keep a local copy of all content in a space up-to-date via delta updates, or only the content that has changed.

Syncing specific content

By default a sync request response includes all resource types including assets, entries of all content types and deleted resources.

To sync specific content you can specify a type parameter for the initial sync:

Parameter Description
all (default) Include all new and changed content, i.e., assets, entries and deletions.
Asset Only include new and changed assets.
Entry Only include new and changed entries.
Deletion Only include deletions of assets and entries.
DeletedAsset Only include deletions of assets.
DeletedEntry Only include deletions of entries.

Initial synchronization

A client syncs content by using the sync endpoint. A single sync consists of one or more pages, each a separate request and response.

The first time a client synchronizes content it sends a request to the sync endpoint with the URI query parameter initial set to true.

You should only sync with initial=true for the initial sync when a client has no existing content. This transfers all content from a space, but does not contain content deleted from fields or deleted assets and content entries.

The limit parameter sets the page size for the number of retrieved entries. The limit is useful when you have very large content entries and reach the maximum response size limit. This limit is then encoded in the synchronization token and used for all following synchronizations.

Sync only contains content from the master environment and is not containing deltas from sandbox environments.

Query entries

Initial synchronization of entries of a specific content type

For entries, you can also specify a content_type parameter. When specifying content_type you must specify type as Entry (meaning there will be no deletions). You can only specify the type and content_type parameter at the initial sync along with the initial parameter. Any subsequent syncs will only include the types you have specified. If you want to sync entries by content type you should separately subscribe to a Deletion or DeletedEntry sync to be notified when entries are deleted.

Query entries

Pagination and subsequent syncs

Synchronization responses contain either a nextPageUrl or nextSyncUrl attribute. If there is more content for the current sync, nextPageUrl will contain an URL with a sync_token which will retrieve the next page. This continues until you have retrieved all content.

At this point, the response will contain a nextSyncUrl which you use to make requests in the future and retrieve delta updates between the current content on Contentful and what you retrieved with your last sync request. Upon completion, you will receive a new nextSyncUrl which you can again use for future updates.

If a client loses the nextSyncUrl, the client should delete its local content and perform an initial synchronization again.

NOTE: The initial query with sync_token will persist across subsequent syncs.

Query entries

Structure of deleted entities

For deletions, objects of the types DeletedAsset and DeletedEntry are sent. Those do not contain full assets or entries.

Query deleted entries

Query deleted assets