Flexible Editor for Directus

A Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG) with JSON output, that allows to integrate M2A relations to make it extremely flexible.

flexible-editor.mp4

Under the hood, it integrates the Tiptap editor as an extension into the Directus app and utilizes an optional many-to-any (M2A) field to place and link related nodes in the editor. This combination makes Flexible Editor a truely rich editor.

Installation

# Using npm
npm install directus-extension-flexible-editor
# Using yarn
yarn add directus-extension-flexible-editor
# Using pnpm
pnpm add directus-extension-flexible-editor

Via Dockerfile:

FROM directus/directus:latest

# At the time of writing, the following lines are necessary to install an extension
# Make sure to use the latest version number
USER root
RUN corepack enable && corepack prepare [email protected] --activate && chown node:node /directus
USER node

# Install the package
# Make sure to use the latest version number
RUN pnpm install directus-extension-flexible-editor@^1.1.0

Basic Usage

In your Directus app simply click the Create Field button and choose Flexible Editor.

basic-usage.mp4

Interface Options

Navigate to the interface tab to adjust the settings.

Option	Description
M2A Reference Field	Described in detail below
Placeholder	Display a placeholder text when empty
Tools	Select the editor tools you want to use
Formats Button Appearance	Display the active format name instead of just an icon
Font	Font that is used in the editor
Spellcheck	Enable spell checking in the editor
Editor Height	Grow till Overflow … The height grows with its content as long as it remains in the viewport. Grow … The height grows with its content. Fixed … The editor has a fixed height.

Display

Navigate to the Display tab and select Flexible Editor to display the editor content as plain text inside the Directus app.

Usage with relation nodes

You can insert items from your Directus collections into the Flexible Editor. This is optional but gives you extreme flexibility when creating rich content. Therefore, you need to add a many-to-any (M2A) field, the editor field can connect to. For Flexible Editor to work this way, you must create the junction collection before adding a M2A field.

usage-with-relation-nodes.mp4

1. Create a new (junction) collection and give it a name like xxxx_editor_nodes and set the Type of the Primary Key to Generate UUID. Finish the setup to create the collection.

2. Open the data model of the collection you want to add Flexible Editor to and click Create Field in Advanced Mode and select Many to Any Relationship.

3. Give the field a name like editor_nodes and on the Relationship tab, uncheck the Auto Fill option, so you can select the junction collection you created earlier manually (like xxxx_editor_nodes). Select the Related Collections you want to integrate into your Flexible Editor field. You don’t need to set a sort field, but you want to set the Relational Triggers to cascade when deleting or deselecting an item.

4. On the Field tab, set the field Hidden on Detail as we manage the M2A items via Flexible Editor. Therefore no interface is required for the M2A field.

5. Now that you have created your M2A field, open the interface settings for your Flexible Editor field and connect to the M2A field by selecting it in the M2A Reference Field.

6. Set the Item Duplication Fields for your junction collection (xxxx_editor_nodes) in the data model settings. This is required to make copy & paste or drag & drop work.

   Tip: If you setup Flexible Editor the same way on different collections, you can copy & paste the duplication settings via Copy Raw Value from the field menu — by clicking the “Item Duplication Fields” label.

Things to keep in mind

You cannot use the same M2A junction collection for multiple collections (in which you use Flexible Editor). This would only work with an any-to-any relationship, which Directus doesn't support at the time of writing.

You should not set Item Duplication Fields for nested Flexible Editor fields as they are managed by their own junction collections.

If you want to duplicate nested M2A items (e.g. a Related Content collection, that relates to multiple other collection items) you only want to duplicate the IDs (in the junction collection) without copying the whole item!

Duplication currently only works within the same editor field or between Flexible Editor fields, that use the same M2A Reference Field. (This will be improved in future releases.)

This also means that you can use the same M2A Reference Field for multiple Flexible Editor fields, although this is not recommended as this will change in future releases.

The current implementation of duplicating relation nodes (M2A items) does not cover all use cases, but will be improved in future releases. If duplication fails you should get a warning.

Tutorial: Relation node with existing items

selecting-related-items.mp4

Custom Editor Styles

For overwriting CSS of the editor content, you can add Custom CSS to your Project Settings inside Directus. You can use the .flexible-editor class for the editor itself as well as a .relation-block class for the relation nodes.

Rendering in the front-end

To render the JSON content generated by Flexible Editor you can follow the official Tiptap guide or you can use the Flexible Editor Content tools included in this package (recommended).

Rendering with interactive components

If you want to render your JSON content with interactive components, especially when using relation nodes, follow this Flexible Editor Content guide.

Rendering plain HTML or plain text

Tiptap provides official functions to generateText() or generateHTML() from the JSON output. Note that as of this writing, there are different versions of generateHTML(): one for client side (import { generateHTML } from "@tiptap/core") and one for server side (import { generateHTML } from "@tiptap/html") rendering!

Contribution

Contributions are welcome. Make sure to open an issue for bugs or start a discussion for feature requests, before you start writing code!