djangocms-rest enables frontend projects to consume django CMS content through a browsable read-only, REST/JSON API. It is based on the django rest framework (DRF) and supports OpenAPI 3 schema generation via drf-spectacular.
✨ Key Features
🏢 Multi-site support – Supports Django sites
🌍 Internationalization (i18n) – Supports available CMS languages
🌲 Structured page tree – Fetch the full page tree with metadata
📚 Paginated page listing – Retrieve pages as a list with pagination support
👀 Preview support – Access draft content using djangocms-versioning supporting
permissions for authenticated staff user
🧬 Typed API schema – Auto-generate OpenAPI schemas for pages and plugins with
drf-spectacular
🧩 Flexible responses – Fetch plugin content as JSON or fully rendered HTML
⚠️ Disclaimer
djangocms-restis under active development. While it is safe to explore and test, using it in production is at your own responsibility.The impact is limited since the API is read-only and does not expose any write operations.
A Headless CMS (Content Management System) is a backend-only content management system that provides content through APIs, making it decoupled from the front-end presentation layer. This allows developers to deliver content to any device or platform, such as websites, mobile apps, or IoT devices, using any technology stack. By separating content management from content presentation, a Headless CMS offers greater flexibility and scalability in delivering content.
Used with drf-spectacular, djangocms-rest generates complete OpenAPI schemas for both DRF
endpoints and Django CMS content plugins. This allows seamless, typed integration with
TypeScript-friendly frameworks.
Running a CMS in headless mode offers several advantages, particularly for projects that require flexibility, scalability, and multi-platform content delivery:
Benefits of running Django CMS in headless mode:
- Flexible content delivery to multiple platforms and devices via APIs, enabling consistent multi-channel experiences.
- Independent development of frontend and backend using best-suited technologies, improving scalability and team efficiency.
- Improved performance through optimized frontend rendering and decoupled architecture.
- Streamlined content management, allowing editors to update content across applications without touching the infrastructure.
- Easier integration with modern frameworks (e.g., React, Nuxt, Next.js) and third-party services.
First, consider whether the benefits of a headless system outweigh the cost of running two separate tech stacks for frontend and backend. For larger projects or when working in teams, having a separation of concerns across different domains can be a significant advantage. However, for smaller projects, this is often not the case.
Limitations and considerations in headless mode:
- Inline editing and content preview are currently only available in a structured view. (Solutions are currently being evaluated).
- API-Caching has yet to be addressed properly and should be handled in the frontend app for the time being.
- Not all features of a standard Django CMS are available through the API (eg. templates and tags).
- The API focuses on fetching plugin content and page structure as JSON data.
- Website rendering is entirely decoupled and must be implemented in the frontend framework.
Are there js packages for drop-in support of frontend editing in the javascript framework of my choice?
The good news first: django CMS headless mode is fully backend supported and works independently of the javascript framework. It is fully compatible with the javascript framework of your choosing.
It's pretty much the same as for a traditional django CMS project, see here for instructions on how to create django CMS plugins.
Let's have an example. Here is a simple plugin with two fields to render a custom header. Please note that the template included is just a simple visual helper to support editors to manage content in the django CMS backend. Also, backend developers can now toy around and test their django CMS code independently of a frontend project.
After setting up djangocms-rest and creating such a plugin you can now run the project and see a REST/JSON representation of your content in your browser, ready for consumption by a decoupled frontend.
cms_plugins.py:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from cms.plugin_base import CMSPluginBase
from cms.plugin_pool import plugin_pool
from . import models
class CustomHeadingPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = models.CustomHeadingPluginModel
module = 'Layout Helpers'
name = "My Custom Heading"
# this is just a simple, unstyled helper rendering so editors can manage content
render_template = 'custom_heading_plugin/plugins/custom-heading.html'
allow_children = False
plugin_pool.register_plugin(CustomHeadingPlugin)
models.py:
from cms.models.pluginmodel import CMSPlugin
from django.db import models
class CustomHeadingPluginModel(CMSPlugin):
heading_text = models.CharField(
max_length=256,
)
size = models.PositiveIntegerField(default=1)
templates/custom_heading_plugin/plugins/custom-heading.html:
<h{{ instance.size }} class="custom-header">{{ instance.heading_text }}</h{{ instance.size }}>
Yes, djangocms-rest provides out of the box support for any and all django CMS plugins whose content can be serialized.
Yes, djangocms-text has both HTML blob and structured JSON support for rich text.
URLs to other CMS objects are dynamic, in the form of <app-name>.<object-name>:<uid>, for example
cms.page:2. The frontend can then use this to resolve the object and create the appropriate URLs
to the object's frontend representation.
I don't need pages, I just have a fixed number of content areas in my frontend application for which I need CMS support.
Absolutely, you can use the djangocms-aliases package. It allows you to define custom placeholders that are not linked to any pages. djangocms-rest will then make a list of those aliases and their content available via the REST API.
- Python
- Django
- Django CMS
Install using pip:
pip install git+https://github.com/fsbraun/djangocms-rest@mainUpdate your INSTALLED_APPS setting:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'djangocms_rest',
'rest_framework',
...
]Add the API endpoints to your project's urls.py:
from django.urls import path, include
urlpatterns = [
...
path('api/', include('djangocms_rest.urls')),
...
]Navigate to django rest framework's browsable API at http://localhost:8000/api/.
djangocms-rest supports OpenAPI 3 schema generation for Django REST framework and type generation
for all endpoints and installed plugins using drf-spectacular.
pip install drf-spectacularUpdate your INSTALLED_APPS setting:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'drf_spectacular',
...
]Update your urls.py settings.
from drf_spectacular.views import SpectacularAPIView, SpectacularSwaggerView
urlpatterns = [
...
# OpenAPI schema and documentation
path('api/schema/', SpectacularAPIView.as_view(), name='schema'),
path('api/docs/', SpectacularSwaggerView.as_view(url_name='schema'), name='swagger-ui'),
...Test endpoints and check expected response types: http://localhost:8000/api/docs/
Fetch api schema as json/xml: http://localhost:8000/api/schema/
Fur further instructions visit drf_spectacular documentation: https://drf-spectacular.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
{
"title": "string",
"page_title": "string",
"menu_title": "string",
"meta_description": "string",
"redirect": "string",
"absolute_url": "string",
"path": "string",
"is_home": true,
"in_navigation": true,
"soft_root": true,
"template": "string",
"xframe_options": "string",
"limit_visibility_in_menu": true,
"language": "string",
"languages": [
"string"
],
"children": []
}The following endpoints are available:
If the API is not specifically protected, anyone can access all public content. It's a good idea to disallow/limit public access, or at least implement proper caching.
| Public Endpoints | Description |
|---|---|
/api/languages/ |
Fetch available languages. |
/api/plugins/ |
Fetch types for all installed plugins. Used for automatic type checks with frontend frameworks. |
/api/{language}/pages-root/ |
Fetch the root page for a given language. |
/api/{language}/pages-tree/ |
Fetch the complete page tree of all published documents for a given language. Suitable for smaller projects for automatic navigation generation. For large page sets, use the pages-list endpoint instead. |
/api/{language}/pages-list/ |
Fetch a paginated list. Supports limit and offset parameters for frontend structure building. |
/api/{language}/pages/{path}/ |
Fetch page details by path for a given language. Path and language information is available via pages-list and pages-tree endpoints. |
/api/{language}/placeholders/{content_type_id}/{object_id}/{slot}/ |
Fetch published page content objects for a given language. Parameters available from page detail. |
For all page related endpoints draft content can be fetched, if the user has the permission to view
preview content.
To determine permissions user_can_view_page() from djangocms is used, usually editors with
is_staff are allowed to view draft content.
| Private Endpoints | Description |
|---|---|
/api/preview/{language}/pages-root |
Fetch the latest draft content for the root page. |
/api/preview/{language}/pages-tree |
Fetch the page tree including unpublished pages. |
/api/preview/{language}/pages-list |
Fetch a paginated list including unpublished pages. |
/api/preview/{language}/pages/{path} |
Fetch the latest draft content from a published or unpublished page, including latest unpublished content objects. |
/api/preview/{language}/placeholders/{content_type_id}/{object_id}/{slot} |
Fetch the latest draft content objects for the given language. |
{
"title": "sub",
"page_title": "sub",
"menu_title": "sub",
"meta_description": "",
"redirect": null,
"in_navigation": true,
"soft_root": false,
"template": "INHERIT",
"xframe_options": 0,
"limit_visibility_in_menu": null,
"language": "en",
"path": "sub",
"absolute_url": "/sub/",
"is_home": false,
"languages": [
"en"
],
"is_preview": false,
"creation_date": "2025-02-26T21:22:16.844637Z",
"changed_date": "2025-02-26T21:22:16.856326Z",
// GET CONTENT using `/api/{language}/placeholders/{content_type_id}/{object_id}/{slot}/`
"placeholders": [
{
"content_type_id": 5,
"object_id": 5,
"slot": "content"
}
]
}{
"slot": "content",
"label": "Content",
"language": "en",
"content": [
{
"plugin_type": "TextPlugin",
"body": "<p>Test Content</p>",
"json": {
"type": "doc",
"content": [
{
"type": "paragraph",
"attrs": {
"textAlign": "left"
},
"content": [
{
"text": "Test Content",
"type": "text"
}
]
}
]
},
"rte": "tiptap"
}
],
"html": "<p>Test Content</p>"
//Rendered HTML when uins ?html=1
}Use the provided schema to quickly generate generate clients, SDKs, validators, and more.
TypeScript : https://github.com/hey-api/openapi-ts
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.