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Building with Astro Content Collections

• By Patrick Ineichen
astroweb-developmenttutorial

Astro’s Content Collections API is a game-changer for managing markdown content in static sites. Let me show you why.

What Are Content Collections?

Content Collections provide a type-safe way to manage groups of similar content. Think blog posts, product pages, or documentation articles.

Key Benefits

  1. Type Safety: Define schemas with Zod for compile-time validation
  2. Automatic Frontmatter Parsing: No manual YAML parsing needed
  3. Developer Experience: Autocomplete and type checking in your IDE
  4. Performance: Optimized content queries and caching

Setting Up a Collection

First, define your collection schema in src/content/config.ts:

import { defineCollection, z } from 'astro:content'

const blog = defineCollection({
  type: 'content',
  schema: z.object({
    title: z.string(),
    description: z.string(),
    pubDate: z.coerce.date(),
    tags: z.array(z.string()).default([]),
  }),
})

export const collections = { blog }

Querying Content

Astro provides helper functions to query your collections:

---
import { getCollection } from 'astro:content'

const posts = await getCollection('blog')
const published = posts.filter((post) => !post.data.draft)
---

Why I Love It

Coming from other static site generators, Astro’s approach feels refreshingly modern. The type safety catches errors early, and the DX is fantastic.

If you’re building a content-heavy site, Content Collections should be your first choice.