Directus.io: An Open-source Self-hosted Headless System for Professionals and Novices

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.

Resources