Creating a Figma plugin with Contentful: A behind-the-scenes look

Creating a plugin for Figma is a fun and challenging experience, and I am excited to share some insights into the development process behind the Contentful to Figma plugin. In this blog post, you will learn about the technology and tools I used to build the plugin and how they helped me overcome some of the challenges I encountered. By the end of this post, you will have a better understanding of how to create your own Figma plugin and optimize your workflow.

Setting up the project

One of the key decisions I made early on was to use the create-figma-plugin tool, which is a command-line interface that helps you set up a new Figma plugin project. This tool uses Preact, a lightweight React-like library, which allowed me to quickly build the plugin's UI and interact with the Figma API. I also used Typescript, which added a layer of type checking and improved the overall development experience.

Styling the plugin

For styling, I used Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework that provides a set of pre-defined CSS classes that can be easily composed to create complex UI components. Tailwind CSS allowed me to quickly build a consistent, responsive, and visually pleasing UI that fits with Figma's design aesthetic. In addition, I used Typescript with Tailwind CSS, which helped me to avoid common mistakes and made the styling process more efficient.

Interacting with the Contentful API

To interact with the Contentful API, I used the official Contentful JavaScript SDK. This SDK provides a simple and consistent interface for querying and manipulating Contentful content, making it easy to retrieve and display the data I needed for the plugin. As I was already familiar with the SDK from working at Contentful in the past, I felt comfortable using it for this project.

Managing the states of the plugin

I used xstate for state management, which is a library for managing complex state machines and statecharts. This allowed me to easily model the different states and transitions of the plugin, and make sure that the UI always stayed in sync with the underlying data. I also used Typescript with xstate, which helped me to catch errors and improve the overall quality of the state management.

Designing the assets

All the assets used in the plugin were designed using Figma, which allowed me to quickly iterate on the design and make sure that everything looked and felt right.

Handling license management

Finally, I used Gumroad for license management, which made it easy to handle purchases, subscriptions, and updates.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a great experience and I enjoyed building this plugin with these technologies. By using Typescript along with Preact, Tailwind CSS, Contentful JavaScript SDK, xstate, and Figma, I was able to create a high-quality and efficient plugin. If you are interested in building your own Figma plugin or looking to optimize your workflow, I hope that this blog post has provided you with some valuable insights. Give the Contentful to Figma plugin a try and see how it can improve your workflow.