[gatsby-source-contentful] Customisable locale fallbacks

[disintegrator]

Summary

One really useful feature to have in gatsby-source-contentful is the ability to customize locale fallback for assets. In Contentful, the locale fallback feature applies to all content (entries and assets). This is almost never desirable and there doesn't seem to be any plans from them to make that configuration more granular. I noticed in the source plugin (based on 2.3.33) that there is a utility function used to fetch fields with a locale fallback. I'm wondering if that can be fed some plugin config option.

Basic example

In the following example, assets that don't have a file set for en-gb will use the file value for en-us.

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: "gatsby-source-contentful",
      options: {
        getFallbackLocale: (nodeType, fieldName, locale) => {
          if (
            nodeType === "ContentfulAsset" &&
            fieldName === "file" &&
            locale === "en-gb"
          ) {
            return "en-us";
          }
        },
      },
    },
  ],
};

The API is purposely abstracted to support not just assets but any Contentful node type. There are use cases to customise the fallback behaviour for other content types. Another example is that we store our translation phrases as entries in Contentful and if a phrase is defined in en-gb but not en-au then we can define a fallback for ContentfulTranslation node type from en-au to en-gb.

Motivation

Why are we doing this? What use cases does it support? What is the expected outcome?

Explained in earlier sections.

[axe312ger]

Thanks for opening a new issue! :)

I see the benefit of this, in my own projects as well.

This almost never desirable

My gut feeling agrees, can we proof this with some kind of source?

and there doesn't seem to be any plans from them to make that configuration more granular

Yes you can not expect the handling of locales in Contentful to change. These project specific behaviours need to be handled by the dev.

---

Will add it to our contentful plugin improval project but I am busy fixing other things.

Any contribution, research and opinions about this feature are very welcome.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hiya!

This issue has gone quiet. Spooky quiet. 👻

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[disintegrator]

not stale

[github-actions[bot]]

Hiya!

This issue has gone quiet. Spooky quiet. 👻

We get a lot of issues, so we currently close issues after 60 days of inactivity. It’s been at least 20 days since the last update here.
If we missed this issue or if you want to keep it open, please reply here.
As a friendly reminder: the best way to see this issue, or any other, fixed is to open a Pull Request. Check out gatsby.dev/contribute for more information about opening PRs, triaging issues, and contributing!

Thanks for being a part of the Gatsby community! 💪💜

[blown-capacitor]

Chiming in with support for @disintegrator viewpoint on images. Images not falling back is confusing, especially with the ability to enable localisation on the image field in the content model. The expectation I had was for localisation to be managed at the content level not the asset level

[axe312ger]

I'll check what we can do in the plugin and will talk to the Contentful team if there are any options/plans to change this on API level.

But can't give any ETA yet

[github-actions[bot]]

Hiya!

This issue has gone quiet. Spooky quiet. 👻

We get a lot of issues, so we currently close issues after 60 days of inactivity. It’s been at least 20 days since the last update here.
If we missed this issue or if you want to keep it open, please reply here.
As a friendly reminder: the best way to see this issue, or any other, fixed is to open a Pull Request. Check out gatsby.dev/contribute for more information about opening PRs, triaging issues, and contributing!

Thanks for being a part of the Gatsby community! 💪💜

[disintegrator]

@axe312ger shall I keep nudging this issue or just let it go stale? (Don’t mind either way)

[axe312ger]

@disintegrator

We might be able to integrate this when we restructure the way nodes are created internally with the source plugin.

Still no ETA possible.

You might ask support if they could do sth on API level.