Does Ruby on Rails Work With Contentful?

Fully CompatibleLast verified: 2026-02-20

Rails and Contentful work together seamlessly—Contentful acts as your headless CMS while Rails handles the presentation layer and business logic.

Quick Facts

Compatibility

full

Setup Difficulty

Easy

Official Integration

No — community maintained

Confidence

high

Minimum Versions

Ruby on Rails: 6.0

How Ruby on Rails Works With Contentful

Rails integrates with Contentful through the official Contentful Ruby SDK, which provides a clean API client for fetching content. You install the gem, configure credentials, and make HTTP requests to Contentful's REST or GraphQL APIs from your Rails controllers or services. Rails handles rendering views, routing, and business logic while Contentful stores and serves all content. This is ideal for decoupled architectures where you want content management separated from application logic. The typical pattern is fetching content in controller actions or background jobs, then passing data to your views. You can also use Rails for webhook handling to trigger cache invalidation when content changes in Contentful, keeping your site fresh without rebuilding.

Best Use Cases

→Blog platforms where editors manage posts in Contentful while Rails handles user comments, authentication, and SEO

→Multi-channel content distribution (web, mobile, email) using the same Contentful content source

→Marketing websites with dynamic landing pages built from Contentful content blocks and Rails-managed forms

→E-commerce sites where product content lives in Contentful but Rails manages cart, checkout, and orders

Quick Setup

bash

gem 'contentful' && bundle install

ruby

# config/initializers/contentful.rb
require 'contentful'

CONTENTFUL_CLIENT = Contentful::Client.new(
  space: ENV['CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID'],
  access_token: ENV['CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN'],
  dynamic_entries: :auto
)

# app/controllers/pages_controller.rb
class PagesController < ApplicationController
  def show
    @page = Rails.cache.fetch("page_#{params[:slug]}", expires_in: 1.hour) do
      CONTENTFUL_CLIENT.entries(content_type: 'page', limit: 1, 
        'fields.slug' => params[:slug]).first
    end
    render :show
  end
end

# app/views/pages/show.html.erb
<h1><%= @page.title %></h1>
<div><%= simple_format(@page.body) %></div>

Known Issues & Gotchas

warning

N+1 queries when fetching related content from Contentful in loops

Fix: Use Contentful's include parameter to eager-load linked assets/entries, or batch requests in service objects

warning

Content preview URLs don't work out-of-the-box in Rails without a dedicated preview server setup

Fix: Implement a preview controller that uses Contentful's preview API with preview tokens, or use Vercel/Netlify for preview deployments

critical

Cache invalidation can cause stale content if webhooks are misconfigured

Fix: Set up Rails.cache integration with Contentful webhooks, use signed webhook secrets, and test cache busting thoroughly

warning

Contentful API rate limits (100 RPS on standard plans) can cause timeouts during traffic spikes

Fix: Implement aggressive caching in Rails, use background jobs for non-critical content fetches, consider CDN caching

Alternatives

•Next.js with Contentful—JavaScript-first, better for real-time preview and static generation
•Django with Contentful—Python alternative with similar architecture patterns
•Strapi with Rails—self-hosted open-source CMS alternative if you need more control

Resources

githubContentful Ruby SDK Documentation docsContentful Delivery API Reference tutorialBuilding a Blog with Rails and Contentful docsContentful Webhooks Guide

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