Content Collections in Astro

Before we move away from using mark­down files and switch over to feed­ing the Astro site con­tent from our Craft CMS project, let’s look at a new fea­ture in Astro 2: Con­tent Collections.

Con­tent col­lec­tions in Astro make it eas­i­er to man­age Mark­down or MDX con­tent by orga­niz­ing the mark­down files into mean­ing­ful col­lec­tions (think like a Sec­tion in Craft CMS) and val­i­dat­ing the data in the front­mat­ter via Typescript. 

One of the chal­lenges of writ­ing with mark­down is that the con­tent orga­ni­za­tion can get messy with a sea of mark­down files and no orga­ni­za­tion or way to query them eas­i­ly. Astro’s Con­tent Col­lec­tions tries to make that a bet­ter devel­op­er and author­ing experience.

Con­tent col­lec­tions live inside of the content direc­to­ry, and any mark­down or MDX file stored in that direc­to­ry — or one of its sub­di­rec­to­ries — will be part of a col­lec­tion. The content direc­to­ry is a spe­cial direc­to­ry and is required to use Con­tent Collections.

For the real estate mar­ket­ing site, we’re going to cre­ate a news con­tent col­lec­tion to house the Mar­ket News posts. 

Let’s get start­ed using Con­tent Collections!