Publication & Editorial

Content Engine includes complete editorial workflows: draft and published states, historical revisions with one-click restore, signed reviewer preview URLs, and automated scheduled publishing.

Quick start

Enable publication, public API, and editorial workflows in your content type definition:

import { defineContentType, field } from "@vitnode/core/content"

export const blogPostContentType = defineContentType({
  id: "blog.post",
  tableName: "blog_posts",
  publication: { enabled: true },
  publicApi: {
    path: "/posts",
    fields: ["title"],
  },
  editorial: {
    enabled: true,
    revisions: { retention: 20 }, // Store up to 20 historical versions
    preview: { enabled: true, expiresInMinutes: 60 },
    scheduling: { enabled: true },
  },
  fields: {
    title: field.text({ required: true }),
  },
})

Editorial Features

1. Publication Lifecycle

When publication: { enabled: true } is configured:

• Records carry a status column ("draft" or "published") and a publishedAt timestamp.
• Unauthenticated public queries automatically filter out drafts, returning only records where status = "published".
• Publishing is idempotent: the first publish stamps publishedAt, while subsequent edits preserve the original publication date.
• The service exposes typed publish(id) and unpublish(id) methods.

2. Revision History

When editorial: { enabled: true } is configured:

• Adds a version column to the database table (defaults to 1 and increments on each restore).
• Each save stores an immutable snapshot in the centralized core_content_revisions table.
• revisions.retention sets the maximum number of revisions kept per record (1–500, default: 50).
• Editors can inspect diffs between any historical snapshot and the current record state.
• One-click restore reinstates previous content while incrementing the version and emitting a content.${id}.restored event.

3. Signed Preview Links

Share unpublished drafts with stakeholders who lack AdminCP accounts:

• Prerequisite: publicApi must be configured on the content type, because preview projections rely on publicApi.fields.
• Generates HMAC-signed URLs valid for a customizable duration (expiresInMinutes: 1–1440, default: 15).
• Optional pathTemplate allows custom preview URL routing (e.g. "/preview/posts/{id}").
• Public frontend routes verify the preview token and stream the draft.

4. Scheduled Publishing

Pick a future release date and time for automatic publishing or unpublishing:

• Prerequisite: publication: { enabled: true } must be enabled.
• The background cron worker checks scheduled items periodically.
• Transitions records between draft and published at the specified timestamp and emits content.${id}.scheduled or content.${id}.schedule_cancelled events.

Configuration Reference

Learn More