Working with Composable Content

In a monolithic application, the content is all part of the same system. You’ve either completely configured the content database, or you’re relying on a framework to do that for you.

Decoupled content services

With composable systems, content and data are decoupled and retrieved by frontend projects via an API. This decoupling often means delegating the entire content infrastructure to a third-party service.

Using multiple backends

In many cases, especially at the enterprise level, you’re sourcing content from multiple providers, as each provider tends to specialize in some focused offering. For example, you may keep page data in a more traditional CMS type of service, while you may hold product information in a service already configured to handle payments and other e-commerce needs.

In these cases, enterprises often build content middleware that stitch together all these sources into a single source of truth. We’ll talk more about that in an upcoming chapter.

Frameworks handling content

Some emerging site frameworks have begun helping with content retrieval. However, as we’ll see in the next chapter, this tends to be an attribute with frameworks geared toward hobbyist projects. Those ready to serve enterprises typically leave content integrations to the developers.