Wherever you are, I hope you’re enjoying these last few days of 2020. But before we start making New Year’s resolutions, let’s look back at some exciting things from the Contentful community!

We code live!

Every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. CET, our DevRel team and guests hang out on YouTube Live and Twitch to talk about GraphQL, Contentful tooling and web development.

This month’s highlight was our session with James Calmus — we implemented our Images API into Next.js’ new Image component and opened a pull request to the popular framework live.

Past episodes

If you want to join us on one of our streams, send me an email or let us know on Slack. We’d love to have you!

Exciting things from the internet

Build times of static site generators

Sean C. Davis dug into the most popular static site generators and their build times. If you’re considering static HTML with thousands of pages, you should have a look. Build times matter!

Hands-free coding

Josh Comeau writes code without using his hands. This article is a fascinating read about accessibility and assistive technology.

How to Make Your Code Reviewer Fall in Love with You

Michael Lynch shared best practices for code reviews. The number one rule: value your reviewer’s time. I received many code reviews in my career and must admit that I don’t always follow that rule. It’s time to improve!

Contentful community

Monthly community hangout: December 16

We did our first community hangout on YouTube and Twitch last month. We covered technical SEO for web developers, a Contentful new Relic app and shared the experience of using Gatsby and Contentful.

Come learn about new Contentful features and listen to excellent talks from our community. This month, Henri Helvetica will talk about future media format, Phil Hawksworth shares wisdom about the Jamstack and we’ll have a look at a Storybook Contentful integration.

Mark your calendars, friends. We’re excited!

If you want to share something with the community, all you need to do is fill out this form. We’d love to give you the stage!

“The headless {creator}” show

Marcelo Lewin kicked off a new series of shows all about headless technology and Contentful, titled “The headless {creator}” show. Marcelo covers our changelog, content modeling and other topics. Keep rocking, Marcelo!

Next.js, Contentful CMS, GraphQL, oh my!

Ben Holmes wrote an in-depth guide about Next and our GraphQL API. Thank you, Ben!

Contentful Corner

A breaking change in `gatsby-source-contentful\` in v4

We worked hard to improve our Gatsby plugin. We’re excited about version 4. It includes bug fixes, performance improvements and a breaking change. If you’re using Gatsby, make sure to have a look at the changelog.

New app in our marketplace

One new app entered our marketplace this month. If you manage your localized content with Phrase, say hi to the new and shiny Phrase app.

Find and install more apps with the click of a button in our marketplace!

Three new courses in our Learning Center

Our learning services team worked hard to provide you with new courses to level up your Contentful game!

You can also find them in our Learning Center

Contentful tip

To find out about your uploaded assets’ URLs, open the asset in our web app and click “Download file.” It’ll open the asset in a new tab with the correct URL.

Changelog

Take a look at the Contentful changelog to learn more.

Existence filter for “Link” and “Array” field types

Members of our Community Slack pointed out that it would be great to filter for existing references in our GraphQL API. We thought this was a great idea and the API now supports \_exists\ filters on references.

Instance parameters for App Framework

You can now use instance parameters to customize installed apps without hardcoding information in their source code, depending on their location and content type. Check out this headless creator show to learn more.

Request verification for App Framework

If you’re using app identities and events, we have some great news for you. We shipped request verification. This new feature enables you to verify that your app’s backend requests came from Contentful and reject those that aren’t.

Stay safe, and talk with you next month!

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Developer newsletter: New features, community events and code reviews