Better Documentation - Connection with netlify-cms

[romdim]

- Do you want to request a feature or report a bug?

Feature

- What is the current behavior?

I do not know how to make this work :)

- If the current behavior is a bug, please provide the steps to reproduce.

- What is the expected behavior?

I should start the server and have some documentation to know what I am doing. How can I connect? How to use with netlify-cms? Relevant issue: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/1027

- Please mention your Go version, and operating system version.

[binaryben]

I too am struggling with this. I am keen to try Netlify CMS, but I would prefer to not even need a Netlify account to do so (though I am happy to require users have a GitHub account for now). So how do I set that up? Is there any documentation to this effect?

Ideally, chucking the following in the config.yml file should be all I need to do:

backend:
  name: github
  repo: user/repo

Then when I navigate to the index.html file (again ideally wherever I want to locate that - even if it's on a different domain), it should provide the login with GitHub option .. and that's it. Log me in.

Just to clarify, I know this probably sounds entitled - wanting to use a free service without signing up to the provider even. The only reason this even strikes me as a possibility though is due to the consistent remarks about wanting to remain provider neutral. Tbh though, I feel like I am missing something regarding the point of Netlify CMS.

From my understanding, it allows me to manage markdown files and data files that exist in a git repo in a structured way. That is exactly what I need (I would even pay a small fee for this function if it can stop requiring me to set up a site anywhere), but it seems to have too much tie into the Netlify ecosystem to be practical for anyone but Netlify users at the moment.

[erquhart]

@BinaryBen note: GitHub does not support OAuth implicit grant, so you cannot authenticate directly from the browser, there must be a server in between. Using Netlify is not a requirement, but if you don't use their auth solution, you have to roll your own. We've open sourced everything, but documentation still needs to happen.

@romdim stay tuned, tracking down guidance.

[binaryben]

Thanks again for your help @erquhart via Gitter! I'd also echo @romdim 's sentiments and say I am keen to provide documentation (or post some tutorials) once I figure out how to set up a custom rolled server.

As a suggestion - I would happily pay a small fee for a Netlify Lite account that provided nothing but the server to interact between Netlify CMS and Github – if it provided fantastic user management options (SSO integration, etc.)! Similar, it would be great to see a free option that is basically what you've already shown me Netlify can do without the CDN/hosting UI (i.e., signup, add the domain(s) where the admin panel will be available, connect Github or whatever auth options you provide and host, and go). I think that could help make the initial interaction with Netlify CMS smoother for those who already have a CI process set up.

Cheers again!

[romdim]

@BinaryBen you've mentioned a wrong person in your comment I think :P My handle is romdim.

[binaryben]

Serves me right for pressing tab without checking. Have edited.

[cbarrett]

@BinaryBen You may also be interested in https://github.com/vencax/netlify-cms-github-oauth-provider/ which, given that you said you're OK with your users having their own GitHub accounts, would work for you. git-gateway is a bit newer and allows for the use of sharing a single set of GitHub credentials for all edits.

[jimjimovich]

The documentation says that git-gateway can be used with "any other identity service that can issue JSON Web Tokens." Would it be possible to document this a bit better? We use Auth0 already for JWT and it would be nice to know how the JWT claims must look like in order to work with git-gateway.

Thanks!

[ArcaneTSGK]

@BinaryBen @romdim Did you figure out how to use git gateway with netlify CMS without using Netlify? I am looking for documentation, tutorials, or anything else to help me actually start this but the documentation is extremely lacking unless you want to use their main product.

[romdim]

Hey @ArcaneTSGK! I hope I had more time to actively look into it and figure it out, unfortunately I didn't, so I've now even forgotten most of what I read and tried back then.

[Herohtar]

Documentation for the "Git Gateway without Netlify" part would definitely be very much appreciated. I'm already using Firebase Auth and it seems like it should be able to integrate with that, but I don't have any idea where to start with setting that up.

[alanpearce]

Echoing the need for documentation. I had to read through the golang code just to figure out what environment variables were needed and what they do. Unfortunately, I am still unsure about GITGATEWAY_API_HOST.

[erquhart]

Meant to post this a while back - @hfte has a wonderful example of using Netlify CMS with self hosted Git Gateway and GoTrue, with a complete tutorial in a repository README:

https://github.com/hfte/netlify-cms-with-selfhosted-gotrue-and-git-gateway

He's even helping folks who run into problems via issues on that repo!

[mnordhaus]

I am also researching this topic at the moment and try to gather as much information about git-gateway and gotrue as possible to get it going and finally document it for the public.

Has anybody saved the following tutorial/documentation somewhere? https://github.com/hfte/netlify-cms-with-selfhosted-gotrue-and-git-gateway it seems to be taken down for some reason.

@erquhart ?

Thanks in advance!

[PTrottier]

@mnordhaus I did a search online and a couple repos came up with the same title that seem to provide some decent guidance with Caddy server instructions too, see: https://github.com/blowski/netlify-cms-with-selfhosted-gotrue-and-git-gateway/blob/master/README.md and now https://github.com/PTrottier/netlify-cms-with-selfhosted-gotrue-and-git-gateway :)

Hope this helps, isn't it fantastic when the community comes together!

Also, Netlify, I have no beef with using your services, definitely want to support your work, but my FLOSS company strives to have our infrastructure to be self hosted, so knowing to roll our own is vital. If you are interested, my company can sponsor the development of documentation on these related projects so that we can all benefit. Perhaps even a Docker image that can be more easily deployed?