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Canvas
Uniform Canvas provides composition services to your applications. It also incorporates other services such as classification and personalization into the composition process.
What's Canvas?#
Uniform Canvas allows business users to have complete control over the presentation layer and build compositions from the components sourcing content from multiple Headless Content Management Systems and Headless Ecommerce Platforms. Such compositions are built without any changes required to the front-end code, and edge-based personalization and A/B testing features are seamlessly integrated.
Uniform Canvas comes with a notion of a Component Library for the front-end developers to register components with, powerful SDK to integrate Canvas with the existing modern JavaScript applications.
To understand the value of Canvas, consider the following three major use cases as key pillars:
Layout layer (the "neck") for the Headless, API-first world
Using Headless Content Management Systems and / or Headless e-commerce allow developers to use any modern tool they want on the front-end and deliver solutions that are performant out of the box, highly scalable, and secure. The developers have the option to use the Jamstack approach (or Jamstack Hybrid) and deploy to a modern platform, like Netlify, Vercel or Cloudflare. This makes both developers and IT happy.
However, this leaves the marketers and non-technical users in a bad place - they're unable to maintain control over the presentation layer. Code changes are needed to build new pages or experiences. Business users aren't able to use the best-of-breed headless technologies to launch new landing pages / campaigns without developer involvement and integration cost. They also often can't preview the content in context.
This sets the Enterprise adoption of Headless technologies back in terms of flexibility and capabilities and limits the ability to achieve fast time to market and overall user productivity. Canvas brings the balance back into the modern MACH/Jamstack/Headless world, where business users now have the ability to create and manage experience-level entities (pages, screens, etc.) without requiring to make code changes.
Integrated personalization and A/B testing that's dead simple
Digitally ambitious marketers didn't give up on the idea of doing personalization and A/B testing at scale. The current generation of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) failed to support this use case without compromising performance and operational cost/scale.
The ability to configure personalization and testing in the same place where the presentation layer is built is an incredible boost to productivity and simplification of getting started with these capabilities.
Multi-source experience composition
As both the idea of a Composable DXP and MACH architecture is getting traction; this prescribes that there is no single system of record for content. A Headless CMS of choice owns the marketing content while e-Commerce system of choice owns the product data, the media assets are owned by a Digital Asset Management system, so on.
It's cumbersome and often impossible for non-technical users to compose an experience (page, mobile screen, kiosk screen) sourced from multiple places (marketing content from one Headless Content Platform and product data from another Headless Commerce Platform).
Localization#
Format#
Localization is set up in the Canvas user interface. The following is an example of the JSON object that represents a slot with components localized for two locales (such as en-us and dk-dk):
The description above is represented in Uniform in the following way:
Configuration#
Localization is configured within Uniform Canvas. For information on how to configure localization, see the localization guide.
Parameter types#
The following parameter types are always available.
| Parameter type | Description |
|---|---|
| Checkbox | Used for values where the user can select yes/no, true/false, on/off, etc. |
| Dropdown list | Used for values where the user can select one value from a predefined list of options. |
| JSON Data | Used for any kind of JSON based data structures. |
| Link | Used for links to Project map nodes. |
| Number | Used for numeric values. |
| Text | Used for text values. |
| Image URL | Used for simple image values. |
tip
When you add an integration to your project, new parameter types are often added to your project. This isn't the case for all integrations, but it's true for most. So if you are looking for a parameter type that's not included in the list of parameter types, check to see if you have added the required integration.
info
Unlike the parameter types added by integrations, these parameters don't require enhancers because the value the user provides is the value the front-end component should use.
Checkbox#
The Checkbox parameter type has no configuration settings. It simply displays a checkbox for the user along with the Parameter Name value.
How Uniform stores the value#
Dropdown List#
import CodeBlock from '@theme/CodeBlock';
The Dropdown List parameter lets a user select a single value from a list options that are assigned to the parameter. It's used when you want to limit the options that are available to the user.
This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Options | The values that populate the dropdown list. The individual options are separated by the pipe character |.For example, if you want the user to select from "top," "middle" and "bottom," you would use the following value: top|middle|bottomThis parameter type also support cases where the value used is different from the value the user selects from. For example, if you want the user to select from "greater than," "equal to" and "less than," but you want the selected value to be ">," "=" or "<," you would use the following value: greater than:>|equal to:=|less than:< |
| Required | Indicates whether the value is required when the component is used. |
How Uniform stores the value#
JSON data#
The JSON Data parameter lets you store any data that's serialized in valid JSON.
This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Expected JSON schema | By providing a JSON schema you can provide validation rules to specify the expected shape and value types of the parameters JSON data. The JSON schema needs to follow the Draft 7 specification. |
| Required | Indicates whether the value is required when the component is used. |
How Uniform stores the value#
Link#
The Link parameter lets a user create a link to a node in a project map, or simple static URL, or email address or telephone number.
In the case of project map, the link will automatically update when the path of the node is updated by moving the node to another location in the node tree.
This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Required | Indicates whether setting a link is required when the component is used. Default: false. |
| Types of links | Types of link you can configure in parameter: Project Map, URL, Email address, Telephone number. By default all types are enabled. |
How Uniform stores the value#
Project map
Url or Email address or Telephone number
How to render in React using HREF attribute:#
Number#
The Number parameter lets a user enter a numeric value. This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Required | Indicates whether the value is required when the component is used. | |
| Integer | Use this when the number is a whole number (such as 3, 17, 101, 5000). | |
| Decimal | Use this when the number is a fractional number (such as 12.44, 400.00, 1044.80). | |
| Number of decimal places | This controls wow precise a number can the user enter. | This option is only available for decimal numbers. |
| Minimum | The user can't enter a value less than this. | Optional |
| Maximum | The user can't enter a value greater than this. | Optional |
How Uniform stores the value#
tip
Notice that the value is stored as a string, not as a number.
Text#
The Number parameter lets a user enter a text value. This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Required | Indicates whether the value is required when the component is used. | |
| Allow multi-line text | If ticked, the user enters the text into a multi-line text box. | Multi-line text is saved in a string with the line-break character \n used to separate lines. |
| Lines count | Maximum number of lines of text the user can enter. | Only available when the allow multi-line text option is enabled. |
| Validation Regex (optional) | Validation logic that limits the text the user can enter. | This uses the regular expression features in the user's browser. |
| Validation Regex Message | Message displayed to the user when the input doesn't match the validation regex. | Only used if the validation regex is specified. |
How Uniform stores the value#
Image URL#
The Image URL parameter provides a field in which to add a link to an externally-hosted image URL. This parameter type has the following configuration settings:
| Name | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Required | Indicates whether the value is required when the component is used. | |
| Validation Regex (optional) | Validation logic that limits the text the user can enter. | This uses the regular expression features in the user's browser. |
| Validation Regex Message | Message displayed to the user when the input doesn't match the validation regex. | Only used if the validation regex is specified. |
How Uniform stores the value#
note
Uniform doesn't optimize the image when rendered in canvas. Try to keep the image file size as small as possible.
Custom integration locations#
The specific places in Uniform where your custom integration appears are configured using the Location Configuration field from the team integration configuration form. The following describes the JSON object used to specify this configuration.
| Attributes | Description |
|---|---|
| baseLocationUrl url | The prefix for relative URLs specified in the locations section. |
| locations object | The places in Uniform where the custom integration is used. |
locations child attributes#
| Attributes | Description |
|---|---|
| canvas object | Details that determine where in the Uniform Canvas user interface the custom integration is used. |
| install object | Route for the page that enables a Canvas editor to set values on the parameter in a composition. |
| settings object | Details that determine how the custom integration is configured. |
canvas object child attributes#
| Attributes | Description |
|---|---|
parameterTypes object | Array of definitions of the parameter types the custom integration supports. |
| Attribute | Description |
| type string | Unique identifier for the parameter type. |
displayName string | Label that's displayed in Canvas when the parameter is configured or edited. |
| configureUrl string | Route for the page that enables a Canvas administrator to configure settings for the parameter that control the user experience for Canvas editors. |
| editorUrl string | Route for the page that enables a Canvas editor to set values on the parameter in a composition. |
install object child attributes#
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| description string | Text that's displayed when a Uniform editor adds the custom integration to a project. Each member of the array is displayed as a separate paragraph. You can include HTML tags in these strings. |
settings object child attributes#
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| url string | Route for the page that enables a Canvas administrator to configure the custom integration. For example, routes to external APIs and API keys are typically configured in the settings. |
note
For more information, see Locations.