Edit this page

Decap Proxy: Work With a Local Repository

You can connect Decap CMS to a local folder, instead of working with a live git repository.

  1. Navigate to a local directory configured with the CMS.
  2. Add the top-level property local_backend configuration to your config.yml:
# when using the default proxy server port
local_backend: true

backend:
  name: git-gateway
  1. Run npx decap-server from the root directory of the above repository.
  • If the default port (8081) is in use, the proxy server won’t start and you will see an error message. In this case, configure the port number.

  1. Start your local development server (e.g. run gatsby develop).

  2. Open http://localhost:<port>/admin to verify that your can administer your content locally. Replace <port> with the port of your local development server. For example Gatsby’s default port is 8000.

Limitation: editorial_workflow is not supported in this environment.

Options

By default, the proxy server runs on port 8081 and allows CORS requests from any origin. You can customize these settings with these options.

Environment Variables

  • PORT define the port you’d like the proxy server to use. Running PORT=8082 npm run start starts the server on port 8082 rather than the default 8081.

  • BIND_HOST variable allows binding to 127.0.0.1 rather than all IP addresses. Running BIND_HOST=localhost npm run start allows connecting to http://localhost:8081/ but connections to http://<public_ip>:8081/ are no longer possible. 3.9

  • ORIGIN allows restricting CORS responses to a specific origin rather that allowing the API to be accessed from any server. Running ORIGIN=https://example.com npm run start changes the HTTP header in responses to Access-Content-Allow-Origin: https://example.com. The server can no longer be accessed by arbitrary websites. 3.9

You can define them in 2 ways:

  1. Create a .env file in the project’s root folder and add these optional variables:
PORT=8082
BIND_HOST=8082
ORIGIN=https://my-local-site.com
  1. Set these variables before the shell command, for example:
PORT=8082 npx decap-server

Custom Port and Host for the Backend URL

Update the local_backend object in config.yml and specify a url property to use your custom port number

backend:
  name: git-gateway

local_backend:
  # when using a custom proxy server port
  url: http://localhost:8082/api/v1
  # when accessing the local site from a host other than 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1'
  allowed_hosts: ['192.168.0.1']