Let's imagine we have a Page component in our NextJS app using the dynamic route of pages/[slug].js. This page will get its content from a corresponding JSON file located at posts/[slug].json. Thus, when you visit /posts/hello-world, it will display the contents of /posts/hello-world.json. We can set up a very simple version of this with the following code:

/pages/[slug].js

import * as React from 'react'

export default function Page({ jsonFile }) {
  const post = jsonFile.data

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
    </>
  )
}

export async function getStaticProps({ ...ctx }) {
  const { slug } = ctx.params
  const content = await import(`../../posts/${slug}.json`)

  return {
    props: {
      jsonFile: {
        fileRelativePath: `/posts/${slug}.json`,
        data: content.default,
      },
    },
  }
}

export async function getStaticPaths() {
  //get all .json files in the posts dir
  const posts = glob.sync('posts/**/*.json')

  //remove path and extension to leave filename only
  const postSlugs = posts.map(file =>
    file
      .split('/')[2]
      .replace(/ /g, '-')
      .slice(0, -3)
      .trim()
  )

  // create paths with `slug` param
  const paths = postSlugs.map(slug => `/posts/${slug}`)
  return {
    paths,
    fallback: true,
  }
}

By exporting the async function called getStaticProps from a page, Next.js pre-renders this page at build time using the props returned by getStaticProps. The getStaticPaths function define a list of paths that have to be rendered to HTML at build time.

Note the shape of the props returned by getStaticProps. This jsonFile shape is needed to set up a form with Tina using the Git helpers.

Adding a Form for JSON With useJsonForm

The next-tinacms-json package provides a hook to help us make JSON content editable. useJsonForm receives an object matching the following interface:

// A datastructure representing a JSON file stored in Git
interface JsonFile<T = any> {
  fileRelativePath: string
  data: T
}

It then returns the contents of data after it's been exposed to the editor.

To use this hook, install next-tinacms-json:

yarn add next-tinacms-json

There are two steps to adding a form with the CMS:

1. Create the form.
2. Register it with the CMS.

To create the form, we will pass jsonFile into useJsonForm, and update the post variable to the hook's return value. To register the form with the CMS, we'll pass form to the usePlugin hook.

/pages/[slug].js

 import * as React from 'react'
+ import { usePlugin } from 'tinacms'
+ import { useJsonForm } from 'next-tinacms-json'

 export default function Page({ jsonFile }) {
   // Create the Form
-  const post = jsonFile.data
+  const [post, form] = useJsonForm(jsonFile)

   // Register it with the CMS
+  usePlugin(form)

   return (
     <>
+      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
     </>
   )
 }

 export async function getStaticProps({ ...ctx }) {
   const { slug } = ctx.params
   const content = await import(`../../posts/${slug}.json`)

   return {
     props: {
       jsonFile: {
         fileRelativePath: `/posts/${slug}.json`,
         data: content.default,
       },
     },
   }
 }

 //...

By default, useJsonForm creates a text field for each value in data. It's possible to customize the form by passing a second argument into useJsonForm:

/pages/[slug].js

//...

export default function Page({ jsonFile }) {
  const formConfig = {
    fields: [
      {
        name: 'title',
        label: 'Post Title',
        component: 'text',
      },
    ],
  }

  const [post, form] = useJsonForm(jsonFile, formConfig)

  usePlugin(form)

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
    </>
  )
}

//...

If you restart the dev server, you should see a form populated with this title field in the sidebar. Try updating the title and watch the changes update on the page in real time! You should now be more familiar with setting up a Git-based workflow with Tina & Next.js.

If you hit save, that will create a commit with the changes tracked in the local data files and push that commit up to the current branch. You can configure this behavior by passing options to the Git router in server.js. See the default Git Router config in the source code.

With a Git backend, the pull-request workflow would still be handled in GitHub. Read the GitHub Backend guide for information on how to set-up a more unified GitHub workflow via the Tina UI.