Content Workflow

Content lifecycle#

Every piece of content in Flare CMS has a status that controls its visibility and behavior. Content moves through statuses via defined transitions.

Statuses#

Status	Description	API visible
`draft`	Work in progress, not publicly visible	Only with auth
`published`	Live and publicly accessible	Yes
`archived`	Hidden from public, preserved for reference	Only with auth

Status transitions#

Not all status changes are allowed. Here's the transition map:

          ┌──────────────────────┐
          │                      ▼
       ┌──────┐           ┌──────────┐
       │draft │◄──────────│ archived │
       └──────┘           └──────────┘
          │                      ▲
          │                      │
          ▼                      │
    ┌───────────┐                │
    │ published │────────────────┘
    └───────────┘

From	Allowed transitions
`draft`	`published`, `archived`
`published`	`draft`, `archived`
`archived`	`draft`

The state machine is defined in packages/core/src/services/content-state-machine.ts and enforced by both API routes and admin routes.

Warning

Known limitation: While the state machine technically allows published -> draft transitions, the admin UI currently only supports forward transitions. Once content is published, you may not be able to unpublish it through the admin interface. Use the API directly if you need to revert to draft status.

Slug behavior#

Every content entry has a slug field used for URL-friendly identifiers.

Slug locking#

Once content has been published at least once (indicated by a non-null published_at timestamp), the slug becomes locked. This prevents breaking existing URLs.

// Slug is locked if content was ever published
function isSlugLocked(content) {
  return content.published_at !== null
    && content.published_at !== undefined
}

Draft content: slug is editable
Published content: slug is locked
Unpublished content: slug remains locked (it was published before)

Tip

If you need to change a slug after publishing, you'll need to create a new content entry with the desired slug and archive the old one.

Scheduled publishing#

Flare CMS supports scheduled publish and unpublish dates. Set a future date and the content will automatically transition at that time.

Field	Purpose
`scheduled_publish_at`	Automatically publish at this timestamp
`scheduled_unpublish_at`	Automatically archive at this timestamp

The scheduler runs as a cron trigger every minute (configured in wrangler.toml):

[triggers]
crons = ["* * * * *"]

The SchedulerService processes pending scheduled content on each cron invocation:

export default {
  fetch: app.fetch.bind(app),
  async scheduled(controller, env, ctx) {
    const scheduler = new SchedulerService(env.DB, env, ctx)
    ctx.waitUntil(scheduler.processScheduledContent())
  },
}

Content versioning#

Content entries track version history through the content_versions table. Each time content is updated, the previous version can be preserved. This gives you:

Audit trail — who changed what and when
Rollback capability — restore previous versions
Change tracking — see diffs between versions

Soft delete#

When you delete content through the admin UI or API, it's soft-deleted — the record is marked as deleted but not removed from the database. This allows:

Recovery — undelete accidentally removed content
Audit compliance — maintain records for regulatory requirements

Caution

Known limitation: Soft-delete does not cascade to related records. If you soft-delete a content entry that other entries reference, those references will point to a deleted record. You'll need to clean up references manually.

Workflow history#

Status changes are logged in the workflow_history table, creating an audit trail:

Field	Description
`content_id`	The content entry that changed
`from_status`	Previous status
`to_status`	New status
`changed_by`	User who made the change
`changed_at`	Timestamp of the change

This history is visible in the admin UI and useful for understanding how content evolved over time.

API examples#

Create content (draft)#

curl -X POST http://localhost:8787/api/content/blog-posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "data": {
      "title": "My First Post",
      "slug": "my-first-post",
      "content": "<p>Hello world!</p>",
      "author": "Admin"
    }
  }'

Publish content#

curl -X PUT http://localhost:8787/api/content/blog-posts/{id} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "data": { "status": "published" }
  }'

Soft-delete content#

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8787/api/content/blog-posts/{id} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"