New API endpoints for managing content at scale

As our customers use Contentful to power expansive online properties and build ambitious digital experiences, we evolve our platform to enable developers to effectively manage and publish content at scale. This product release adds new endpoints to the Content Management API (CMA) ensuring quicker turnaround times and improved developer productivity.

Three new API endpoints let you do more at once

• The bulk actions endpoint lets developers publish, unpublish and validate a large content collection with a single API call. 

• The releases endpoint lets developers validate and schedule a large content collection to be published or unpublished with a single API call. 

• The references endpoint returns a tree of child references of the given entry with a single call.

The bulk actions and releases endpoints abstract the sequential process of publishing entries by batching individual operations into an asynchronous job capable of handling up to 200 items at a time. 

The benefit of executing write operations in batches is quicker turnaround times. Publishing 200 entries one by one takes around 20 seconds. With no network latency and API rate limits to contend with, the bulk actions endpoint can accomplish the same task in less than half of the time. 

Batching individual operations also has the benefit of eliminating ambiguous outcomes. When a collection of entries is sent to the bulk actions or releases endpoints, the developers can be confident that either the collection will be published in its entirety or not published at all. 

Stay in control by validating entries 

And while we are on the topic of errors, both bulk actions or releases endpoints offer support for validating selected entries before sending them for immediate publishing or scheduling a later release. Developers can use this action to quickly identify invalid entries and take a remedial action.

The references endpoint complements the other two endpoints by allowing developers to instantly fetch the tree of child entries referenced by the given entry. This is useful when developers need to orchestrate content collections with confidence. 

See the API endpoints in action

The new API endpoints have been hard at work from day one. They power the reference view, found in the entry editor on the paid plans, and enable key features in the freshly released Compose + Launch apps. Having had the benefit of using these API endpoints ourselves, we are very excited about the types of workflows they will enable next.

Our early access program participants highlighted two popular use cases that benefited from the new API endpoints and the web functionality they enable. The first one is running promotional campaigns and doing big product launches, since both require lots of pages to go live (and be retired) at the same time. The second one is doing programmatic SEO, that is, generating thousands of landing pages targeting long-tail keywords. To do so, customers need a way to automate page creation.

We hope that the new API endpoints will enable our customers to accomplish a wide range of tasks — from running faster migrations and scaling programmatic workflows, to providing useful insights and building powerful apps. The endpoints are available on all current plans and space types. To learn more, visit the CMA reference section. 

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