--- title: "Acquia CMS Headless Beta" date: "2022-07-06T18:00:00+00:00" summary: image: type: "article" url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/90741-acquia-cms-headless-beta" id: "08ed54e0-2371-43d9-900e-0003dfa343a8" --- Table of contents will be added Drupal's site building UI can be confusing and overwhelming for new comers and parts of it even unnecessary for headless CMS implementations. We partnered with Acquia to make site building easy for frontend developers with the Acquia CMS Starter Kits for Drupal. A key way we did this was with the API dashboard. In the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit for Drupal, there are two general types of end users: * Content managers - whom the CMS is built for, manage the structured content that gets served to third party consumers such as node.js websites, frontend apps, IoT integration (e.g. smart displays) and native mobile applications. * Developers - who build those third party consuming applications. They need to use the CMS to: * Setup consumer identity, permissions and access * Setup data models for consumption * Access API documentation based upon the defined data model of the CMS. These developers are commonly working with javascript/typescript frameworks such as React, Next, Vue and Swvelt are do not need to be PHP or Drupal developers (the technology Acquia CMS is built on). For these developers, Acquia and [Bounteous](https://www.bounteous.com/) partnered together to build a headless dashboard into [Acquia CMS headless](https://www.acquia.com/features/headless-cms-for-developers) to make API management easier. **Let's take a look!** Accessing the headless dashboard -------------------------------- The headless dashboard can be accessed from differently locations. In Hybrid mode, it can be found as a drop down from the Tour menu item in the admin menu navigation. ![Menu with "Reports," "Tour," and "Headless Dashboard" options. Green checkmark icon on the right. Blue background.](https://acquia.widen.net/content/0e2c472d-55c1-475d-98d7-aff2578a8f10/web/url_291b617d971385f74442d82f03acfffa.webp) When operating in full headless mode, the Headless Dashboard is found under the API menu and is just called "Dashboard". ![Website interface showing a dropdown menu under "API" with options like Dashboard, OAuth clients, and Roles. A green checkmark is visible.](https://acquia.widen.net/content/cc2883ab-e4de-4ba6-8954-d51f12c898a9/web/url_fe8c3b609ac9ab494b09602da11474a7.webp) Dashboard overview ------------------ ![API Dashboard interface showing JSON:API and OpenAPI sections, API keys, user management, and entity types.](https://acquia.widen.net/content/001f3ad3-345d-4054-9771-78d899d91bca/web/url_db237b791626bae96c4b08c4b89617fc.webp) ### API endpoint and documentation At the top of the dashboard, you'll see access to the default endpoint: json:api. [json:api](https://jsonapi.org/) is a standardized format for communication over APIs. There is [wide support for json:api across many languages](https://jsonapi.org/implementations/) including [drupal-jsonapi-params](https://github.com/d34dman/drupal-jsonapi-params): A library for building query parameters when connecting with Drupal CMS's JSON:API. All of Acquia CMS's data model can be accessed through the json:api endpoint and you can access the documentation for that endpoint through [https://www.openapis.org/](https://swagger.io/specification/): a standard for API documentation. It comes in with two UIs: [Redoc](https://github.com/Redocly/redoc) and [Swagger UI](https://swagger.io/). ![Screenshot of a JSON API documentation page, detailing query parameters and response samples for resource collections, with highlighted successful operation message.](https://acquia.widen.net/content/6d589d73-be84-444c-a692-9c00d05bf938/web/url_aa8ab144d44abe116d29520a579d4f07.png) Viewing the article content type from the default content model in Acquia CMS through the Redoc API endpoint documentation inside the CMS. ### API Access With the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit for Drupal, you can customize how consumers authenticate with your API (using API keys) and what parts of the API they can access (using users and roles). By default, the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit is setup for OAuth authentication using [Simple OAuth](https://www.drupal.org/project/simple_oauth) and [Consumers](https://drupal.org/project/consumers). From the API Keys panel in the headless dashboard, you can create new consumers and determine which users and roles a consumer should represent. Note Note: In Drupal, permissions are granted to roles. Roles are granted to users and a user is associated with an OAuth consumer. Whatever permission that user has will then be permitted to the consumer also. Any user assigned the **Headless** Role, they will also be listed here in the dashboard under API Users. This way it is quick to see all the users that represent your API consuming third party applications. ### Next.js sites Out-of-the-box, the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit comes ready to integrate with [Next.js for Drupal](https://next-drupal.org/): a library for native integration between Next.js and Drupal over the json:api endpoint. Acquia also offers a [next.js starter kit here](https://github.com/acquia/next-acms) ([see tutorial](https://dev.acquia.com/tutorial/nextjs-acquia-nextjs-startkit-acquia-cms)). Knowing about your Next.js sites helps: 1. Know how to route site preview\* for a given content type to the right next.js site 2. Provide the required environment variables for the next-drupal application. 3. Handle content invalidation at the Next.js application when updates occur in the CMS (_experimental feature_). If you're interested in using Next.js, check the Next.js starter kit check box in the Acquia CMS Starter Kit Tour setup. This will precreate the Next.js site, user, roles and configuration ready to integrate with your next.js application. ![CMS Dashboard screenshot showing options for enabling Next.js starter kit and Headless mode with Node and Next JS integration.](https://acquia.widen.net/content/8f3b5fd9-da74-4822-bcc8-945895e7c628/web/url_b20ec3a06828cc5d879ff6023c49c8b0.png) Note Next.js site preview is not fully available in the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit beta release. For it to work, you must have headless mode disabled so that node pages will be rendered by the CMS. We'll be fixing this before General Availability (GA). Conclusion ---------- If you're a developer building with Acquia's Headless Starter Kit for Drupal, the headless API dashboard makes getting started with Headless Drupal easier than ever. Try it out now! * [Getting started with the Acquia CMS Headless Starter Kit for Drupal](https://dev.acquia.com/tutorial/nextjs-acquia-setting-acquia-cms)