What is Raster?

Raster is a digital asset manager for modern teams, saving time organizing, editing, and hosting photography.

To get started, ensure you have an account or sign up for a free one at https://raster.app.

Preparing to Use the Raster App in Contentful

Before using the app in Contentful an API key is needed, along with your Organization’s ID.

Getting the Organization ID

To use the Raster app in Contentful, an Organization ID is required. You can get the Organization ID by navigating to Organization name > Settings. The Organization ID is the slug found after the raster.app URL.

API Key

Similar to a required Organization ID, the Raster app in Contentful also needs an API Key. You can set up the API key and enable library level access by navigating to Organization name > Settings.

To enable APIs, follow these steps:

1. Generate a new key.
2. Enable Read access for the libraries you want to access via the API key.
3. Save your changes.

Configure the App in Contentful

Once the Organization ID and the API Key has been set up, it can be configured it in Contentful after the app has been installed.

In Contentful go to Apps > Installed apps > Configure. That will take you to a config screen where the two piece of information collected above are required.

New JSON object field

Once the app is configured, to use it will be straight forward.

In your content type, add a new field as a JSON object and ensure that the Appearance at the bottom of the page is set to Raster. This will enable Contentful to store asset references in a JSON format, allowing for real-time retrieval through Contentful's GraphQL API with a single query.

How to Use the App

Provided that the app has been installed and configured correctly, you should be able to see the Raster widget. Clicking on the + Add Raster images will open the Raster app.

On the left hand side there is the list of the libraries, showing the selected library, while on the right hand side there are all the digital assets that are part of that library.

As soon as the user starts selecting images, they will appear at the top of the list. From here the user can remove and reorder the selected images. Once the selection has been made, confirming the selection at the bottom will store the images’ details in Contentful’s JSON object.

Once confirmed, the assets can be previewed in your entry even before you can publish.

Access Your Saved Assets via Contentful’s GraphQL

Lastly, the advantage of this implementation is that, even though your digital assets are stored in Raster, they can be retrieved via the Contentful GraphQL APIs just like any other piece of Contentful content.