Build a headless frontend

Build the frontend a Drupal Canvas site renders through. Canvas Headless is the recommended way to build a frontend on Source CMS. The quickstart is its path: scaffold the app from the Canvas starter kit (or wire in one you have), make it the renderer for the Canvas editor, and place your own components on a page. Components covers how the parts editors place are created and kept in sync.

The advanced path reads content as data: beyond the pages Canvas composes, the app builds its own listings and detail routes over JSON:API. The fetch layer for that lives in Work with content via the API, starting at First fetch; Render content turns it into pages in the app.

Images, video, and documents can arrive by another route. A team whose approved assets live in Acquia DAM reaches them through a separate product with its own API, SDK, and access token, and serves most of them from a CDN rather than fetching them at all.

QuickstartScaffold a frontend app, register it with your site, and have the Drupal Canvas editor render its preview through your app with your own components placeable by editors.

ComponentsWhere a Canvas Headless app's components live, how they get their identity, and how they synchronize with the site, with nothing to push.

Wire an app you already haveInstall the Canvas Headless SDK and your framework's adapter in an existing app, wire it, and reach the same registered state the quickstart's scaffold gives you.

Render contentFetch one entry by its UUID for a detail route, render rich text and images safely, and page through a listing. The step from "titles in a list" to a real content site.