Strapi Announces TypeScript Support, Makes Third-Party Plugins Directly Accessible at StrapiConf 2022

"Headless broke the editing experience."

That was one of the many enlightening observations we heard during a press briefing yesterday with Pierre Burgy, CEO of Strapi. Along with a few sneak peeks of what to expect at the second annual StrapiConf, the presentation covered some exciting announcements from one of the world's leading open-source headless content management systems (CMS).

Now in its second year, StrapiConf is the company's free annual conference, focused on its growing community of global users. One of the highlights of the two-day event has been the launch of the beta version of Strapi 4.2 – which features TypeScript support, a "dark mode" screen option, and an in-app marketplace packed with integrations. 

Enhancing the developer experience with TypeScript

TypeScript, one of the most requested features on the Strapi roadmap, now makes the Strapi codebase more reliable, accessible, and easy to refactor for developers. TypeScript provides numerous features, including the addition of syntax to JavaScript – enabling users to catch errors earlier within their editor. TypeScript was also reported as being used by 78% of the 2020 State of JS respondents, with 93% saying they would use it again.

"When we developed Strapi v4, we anticipated TypeScript support by introducing an internal typing system," said Alexandre Bodin, CTO, Strapi. "The new TypeScript support relies on that, but it will also be very useful for schema and data migration. This brand new version also introduces a dark mode option for those who prefer dark interfaces. This new functionality also sets the foundations for more advanced and custom themes in the future."

Growing a stronger community at StrapiConf

According to the company, StrapiConf is assembling more than 4,000 attendees and 20 sponsors from across the Strapi Community. The mission: learn, contribute, and collaborate on the future of the leading open-source headless CMS. Holding a second annual conference is a clear signal that Strapi's footprint and market position is gaining ground and should give industry watchers and investors a reason to pay attention. 

With more than 43,000 stars on GitHub, 700 active contributors, and more than 5 million downloads, Strapi is the fastest-growing open-source Headless CMS. Strapi empowers developers to quickly build apps that enable collaboration and collective intelligence over the entire content lifecycle.

Strapi Market expands headless and composable ecosystem

Following the announcement last month of Strapi Market, a marketplace of plugins and integrations, Strapi v4 now adds access directly in the admin panel, giving users the ability to easily find and install v4 plugins in seconds taking advantage of new features while securely accelerating time to production. 

"Imagine a world where you could pull from any device, in any format, content that is connected to various services and co-created by hundreds of people," said Burgy. "With this new release, we're moving beyond the creation of a Headless CMS and building a Composable Content Platform together with the Strapi community and ecosystem."

Strapi also shared its plan for another highly requested feature called custom fields, a powerful way to aggregate application programming interfaces (APIs), making frontend engineers' lives easier and significantly speeding up development. Custom fields enable support for new business data from external sources and improve the content editing experience by exposing new content types directly in the administration panel. 

Coming soon: Strapi Cloud

During our press briefing, Burgy pointed out that while some customers prefer on-prem, others want cloud hosting without the challenges of managing servers.

To that end, the company shared a few details about the launch of Strapi Cloud: a new offering based on a platform-as-a-service approach. With Strapi Cloud, users will have a seamless deployment process without having to compromise on Strapi's unique customization capabilities. 

Read this blog post to learn more about all the StrapiConf announcements in more detail. 

About Strapi

Strapi is the leading open-source headless CMS: 100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. Strapi enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use their favorite tools. Content teams use Strapi to autonomously manage all types of content and distribute it from one CMS to any channel including websites, mobile apps, or connected devices. The remote-first company has employees in six countries and is scaling its team globally. To learn more, visit strapi.io.