Directus.io: An Open-source Self-hosted Headless System for Professionals and Novices
Directus is an enterprise-grade headless system that warps SQL database into production-ready API. It comes backed with a features-rich application, powerful API and SDK support and multiple SQL database engines support.
Why do we like Directus?
Here is a quote from the documentation that explains the first-thing we like about this amazing project:
Directus wraps any new or existing SQL database with RESTful JSON endpoints for connecting content anywhere
In this article we will explore Directus features, its use-case and installation options.
Directus is built as a database-first system which consisting of SQL-wrapper, REST-API engine, Headless Content driven engine, and Directus Application which can be use to manage the API or used as CMS or a web application on its own.
Directus App suite
The app suite is formed of two parts:
1- Directus Database API: REST-API endpoints to build applications
2- Directus Admin App: Admin application to manage, create and control the API and digital assets.
Feature
- User-friendly interface
- Easy to use
- Customizable
- Portable
- Supports Complex Relationships: any-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, and custom relations.
- Rich documentaion
- Community supported
- Modular
- Multilingual content support
- Digital assets management
- User management with advanced options: permission, roles and groups
- Collections and fields management
- Webhooks support manager
- Activity log
- Community supported
It's about time.
The project is developed to provide a quality production-ready system for developers who wants to warp usable secure API for their mobile, or web applications, and the end-users who want to build a quick web application without the need to dive into massive coding sprint.
Use-case
Here are some examples use-cases for Directus:
1- Headless CMS
2- REST-API
3- Web application
4- IoT "Internet of Things" platform
5- Game data-engine
6- eCommerce system
7- CMS and blog engine
8- SQL Data-engine
9- SaaS platform
Installation options
The developers offer multiple installation options which include raw installation, docker and one-click-install for DigitalOcean users.
Try it out
If you are interested in trying it out, Directus offers an online demo, however, please not it may be a little slow, so you should consider trying it on your local machine or a webserver like DigitalOcean.
License
Directus is released as an open-source project under the GPLv3 license.