Application Launcher

Goal

Use Next for Drupal to connect multiple Next.js sites to Acquia CMS

Prerequisites

Before proceeding you should already have a working install of Acquia CMS headless.
We highly recommend using the starter content to easily be able to work with the Next.js for Acquia CMS starter kit.
No Drupal or PHP expertise are required for this tutorial
You will need Node Package Manager (npm)
You will need familiarity with Next.js and able to edit typescript files.

Overview

With the Next module in Drupal, you can connect multiple Next.js applications, built with next-drupal, to the same Drupal instance. This allows your Drupal CMS to act as a content service to many different sites. This is also known as an omnichannel architecture and can be used to:

Distribute common or shared content across multiple experiences (e.g. Mobile, TV, Kiosk and Website).
Reuse content across brands and geographies.
Connect applications with different roles (e.g. published view vs preview or staging vs production).

In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to connect multiple Next.js sites to Acquia CMS using the Next.js module.
If you haven’t worked with Acquia CMS Headless before, consider reading this blog first on using the headless and next.js starter kits in Acquia CMS.

In this tutorial, we’ll connect two different Next.js for Acquia CMS starter kits to the same Acquia CMS Drupal site each with a different authentication method.

Connecting Next.js as an anonymous consumer

As of v1.3.0, the Next module in Drupal doesn’t require authentication and this is a simple way to build a Next.js site that can render public, published content from Drupal.

Create a Next project with the next-acms starter kit

 npx create-next-app -e https://github.com/acquia/next-acms/tree/main/starters/basic-starter app1_anon

Edit drupal.ts

Once the app has been created, edit lib/drupal.ts and comment out the authentication requirements:

 import { DrupalClient } from 'next-drupal';export const drupal = new DrupalClient( process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_DRUPAL_BASE_URL, { previewSecret: process.env.DRUPAL_PREVIEW_SECRET, // auth: { // clientId: process.env.DRUPAL_CLIENT_ID, // clientSecret: process.env.DRUPAL_CLIENT_SECRET, // scope: // 'administrator developer site_builder content_administrator content_author content_editor user_administrator headless', // }, // @see https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/32238 // @see https://github.com/vercel/next.js/blob/d895a50abbc8f91726daa2d7ebc22c58f58aabbb/packages/next/server/api-utils/node.ts#L504 forceIframeSameSiteCookie: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development', },);

Create a Next.js site

In Acquia CMS, create a Next.js site called app1_anon and export the environment variables into your Next.js app .env.local file.

Setting up Preview

Even though Next.js is talking to Drupal as an anonymous user, its still able to preview draft content for users authorised by Drupal. Heres how you can quickly set that up.

Edit Next.js Entity Types

From the Headless Dashboard, edit the entity type you want to expose site preview for content managers:
Test content preview

Now from that node edit page you can use the Preview tab to preview content through your chosen Next.js site.

Connecting Next.js as an OAuth consumer (Client Credentials)

Let's say you want to allow Next.js to submit forms (e.g. webforms) without allowing public access to also submit forms using the same API endpoints. This would be a scenario where you would want to provide your Next.js site with OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials.

Create a Next project with the next-acms starter kit
```
 npx create-next-app -e https://github.com/acquia/next-acms/tree/main/starters/basic-starter app1_anon
```
The next-acms starter kit default authentication system is OAuth so unlike the anonymous example, no modifications to lib/drupal.ts are required.
Setup OAuth Consumer

In Acquia CMS Headless, you’ll need to create
- A role that holds the permissions you which to grant the Next.js application (e.g. submit webform)
- A user to represent your Next.js application
- A consumer which contains the user you created, the roles you create as scopes and the consumer secret which becomes the DRUPAL_CLIENT_SECRET in the Next.js application.
Note
You can use the Next.js starter kit in Acquia CMS to handle these steps for you

Conclusion

You can host multiple Next.js sites all pointed to the same Drupal CMS. This allows you to build a single content service that distributes content to multiple channels. In this tutorial we showed how we can distribute content to different frontends using different authentication mechanisms.