Hypothetical: a site build that uses client Strapi backend data with ProcessWire on Frontend ?

[protro]

Hi PW forums

This might me an ignorant question, but if the client has already built out their data backend using the headless CMS Strapi, could that data be fetched and used within ProcessWire on the frontend, or would this simply be an unnecessary headache ? My cursory understanding is that it would be possible, but would it be advised ?

Thanks for your input.

[teppo]

There's no such thing as an ignorant question, but in this case I would probably lean towards "unnecessary headache" ?

If ithe goal is to use some data from Strapi and combine that with some content produced in ProcessWire, this might make sense. E.g. the data from Strapi would only cover part of the project. But if the client wants to continue to manage all their content in Strapi and you'd just be using ProcessWire for the front-end, this would mean that you'd be mitigating much of what ProcessWire has to offer.

Not to mention that it might be a bit of work to make the systems run smoothly together, and when things inevitably change in the future, you'd be doing every update to the content structure twice: once in Strapi, and again in ProcessWire.

I'm not familiar with Strapi, but I'm pretty sure they have a decent API already (considering that it's a headless CMS that's kind of their bread and butter) so personally I'd consider building the front-end using something else. Laravel might be a decent PHP choice, but there are many other solutions as well. Most commonly folks seem to combine Strapi and similar headless systems with some JS framework, e.g. https://strapi.io/integrations/vuejs-cms.

Anyway, that's just my opinion ?‍♂️