Contentlayer

Migrate from Contentlayer to Content Collection

Content Collection was built as an alternative to the awesome Contentlayer, you can read more here. If you are coming from Contentlayer, you can migrate easily to Content Collection. The concepts are similar, but there are some differences.

Fields

Content Collections uses a schema to define the fields of a collection. Computed fields can be added with the transform function.

Content

In contentlayer you have to define if a collection is of type markdown or mdx. Content Collections does not parse or compile the content of a file. The content is just a string. But it offers a transform function, which can be used to transform the content before it is saved to the collection. Please have a look at the transform documentation for more information.

_raw vs _meta

In Contentlayer, you can access the _raw field with file details. In Content Collections, there's a similar field named _meta for file information. When transitioning from Contentlayer to Content Collections, use the transform function to include a _raw field mirroring Contentlayer's structure in the document. This way, you won't need to modify your application code.

Example

transform: (doc) => {
  return {
    ...doc,
    _raw: {
      sourceFilePath: doc._meta.filePath,
      sourceFileName: doc._meta.fileName,
      sourceFileDir: doc._meta.directory,
      flattenedPath: doc._meta.path,
      contentType: "mdx", // or markdown
    },
  };
},

_id

Each document in Contentlayer has a unique identifier called _id. Content Collections do not have an id field. The _id field in Contentlayer corresponds to the file path. By utilizing the transform function, we can assign the filePath from the _meta field as the _id.

Example

transform: (doc) => {
  return {
    ...doc,
    _id: doc._meta.filePath,
  };
},