A rich text editor (WYSIWYG) with JSON output that allows the integration of M2A relations to make it extremely flexible.
Under the hood, it integrates the Tiptap editor as an extension to the Directus app and uses an optional many-to-any (M2A) field to place and link relation nodes in the editor. This combination makes Flexible Editor a truly rich editor.
🚀 Composable Blocks: Compose blocks as you would with the built-in builder interface and insert these referenced items directly into Flexible Editor as a “Relation Block”.
🚀 Inline Blocks: Use relation blocks inline by inserting them directly into the text flow as “Relation Inline Blocks”.
🚀 Internal Linking: Create your own custom link collection(s) and apply it as “Relation Mark” to selected text within Flexible Editor.
🚀 Single Line Mode: Turn Flexible Editor into an inline editor that only allows marks and inline blocks. This way, you can have a simple text input field that could contain a link or any other mark (including Relation Marks and Relation Inline Blocks).
🚀 Adjustable Toolbar: Choose between a static, sticky or floating toolbar.
🚀 Render Interactive Components: On your front-end, you can render any node (especially “Relation Nodes”) with your own custom component using Flexible Editor Content.
In your Directus app simply click the Create Field
button and select Flexible Editor
.
Navigate to the interface tab to adjust the settings.
Option | Description |
---|---|
M2A Reference Field
|
Described in detail below (Usage with relation nodes) |
Placeholder | Display a placeholder text when empty |
Tools | Select the editor tools you want to use |
Toolbar | Static … The toolbar appears at the top of the editor Sticky … The toolbar stays at the top of the viewport as you scroll Floating … The toolbar floats above the current cursor position |
Formats Button Appearance | Display the active format name instead of just an icon |
Input Mode | Multi-line text … Default behavior Single-line text … Turns into an inline editor that only allows marks and inline blocks |
Editor Height | Grow till Overflow … The height grows with its content as long as it remains in the viewport Grow … The height grows with its content Fixed … The editor has a fixed height |
Font | Font that is used in the editor |
Spellcheck | Enable spell checking in the editor |
Navigate to the Display
tab and select Flexible Editor
to display the editor content as plain text in the Directus app.
You can insert items from your Directus collections into Flexible Editor. This is optional but gives you extreme flexibility when creating rich content. To do this, you need to add a many-to-any (M2A) field, that the editor field can connect to. For Flexible Editor to work in this way, you must create the junction collection before adding a M2A field.
-
Create a new (junction) collection and give it a name like
xxxx_editor_nodes
and set theType
of the Primary Key toGenerate UUID
. Finish the setup to create the collection. -
Open the data model of the collection to which you want to add Flexible Editor, click
Create Field in Advanced Mode
, and selectMany to Any Relationship
. -
Enter a name for the field, such as
editor_nodes
and uncheckAuto Fill
on theRelationship
tab, so that you can manually select the junction collection you created earlier (such asxxxx_editor_nodes
). Select theRelated Collections
you want to integrate into your Flexible Editor field. You don’t need to set asort
field, but you do want to set theRelational Triggers
tocascade
when an item is deleted or deselected. -
On the
Field
tab, set the field toHidden on Detail
because we are managing the M2A items through Flexible Editor. Therefore, no interface is required for the M2A field.Note: If you use Flexible Editor inside groups – especially inside nested groups –, make sure you put your
editor_nodes field
in the same group as yourFlexible Editor field
, otherwise they may lose their connection! -
Now that you have created your M2A field, open the interface settings for your Flexible Editor field and connect to the M2A field by selecting it in the
M2A Reference Field
.Once you have selected a valid M2A field, three additional fields appear:
- Relation Block … A block, you can insert in Flexible Editor, that references an item of a collection you can compose yourself.
Use Cases: gallery, video, related content, complex content structure, …
- Relation Inline Block … Same as “Relation Block”, but appears inside text.
Use Cases: link to referenced item using item data for link text, inline image/icon, placeholders/variables for templates (e.g. email), …
- Relation Mark … A mark, you can apply to selected text, that references an item of a collection you can compose yourself.
Use Cases: classic link (compose your own), link to referenced item, button that opens a modal/overlay/video, …
All three fields have the same options, which correspond to the collections you selected in your M2A field. Here you can select which collection should appear as a
Relation Block
,Relation Inline Block
orRelation Mark
within Flexible Editor. - Relation Block … A block, you can insert in Flexible Editor, that references an item of a collection you can compose yourself.
-
Set the
Item Duplication Fields
for your junction collection (xxxx_editor_nodes
) in the data model settings. This is required forcopy & paste
ordrag & drop
to work.Tip: If you set up Flexible Editor in the same way for different collections, you can copy and paste the duplication settings via
Copy Raw Value
from the field menu — by clicking on the “Item Duplication Fields” label.
You cannot use the same M2A junction collection for multiple collections (where you use Flexible Editor). This would only work with an any-to-any relationship, which Directus doesn't support at the time of writing.
You should not set Item Duplication Fields
for nested Flexible Editor fields as they are managed by their own junction collections.
If you want to duplicate nested M2A items (e.g. a Related Content collection, that references several other collection items), you want to duplicate only the IDs (in the junction collection) without copying the whole item!
Duplication currently only works within the same editor field or between Flexible Editor fields, that use the same M2A Reference Field
. (This will be improved in future releases.)
This also means that you can use the same M2A Reference Field
for multiple Flexible Editor fields, although this is not recommended as this will change in future releases.
The current implementation of duplicating relation nodes (M2A items) does not cover all use cases, but will be improved in future releases. If the duplication fails, you should get a warning.
selecting-related-items.mp4
(Video tutorial about relation node with existing items)
To override the CSS of the editor content, you can add Custom CSS
to your Project Settings
in Directus. You can use the .flexible-editor
& .flexible-editor-wrapper
classes for the editor itself as well as .relation-block
, .relation-inline-block
and .relation-mark
classes for the relation nodes.
To render the JSON content generated by Flexible Editor you can follow the official Tiptap guide or you can use the Flexible Editor Content tools included in this package (recommended).
If you want to render your JSON content with interactive components, especially when using relation nodes, follow the Flexible Editor Content guide.
Tiptap provides official functions to generateText()
or generateHTML()
from the JSON output. Note that as of this writing, there are different versions of generateHTML()
: one for client-side rendering (import { generateHTML } from "@tiptap/core"
) and one for server-side rendering (import { generateHTML } from "@tiptap/html"
)!
Contributions are welcome. Be sure to open an issue for bugs or start a discussion for feature requests, before you start writing code!