Cockpit CMS Custom Collections and Singletons Development

Development of Custom Collections and Singletons in Cockpit CMS

Collections and Singletons are the two main types of content in Cockpit. Collections are for repeating entries (articles, products), Singletons are for unique sets of fields (homepage settings, about page).

Creating a Collection via API

// Cockpit allows creating collections through Admin UI or programmatically
// POST /api/collections/createCollection

$collection = [
  'name' => 'products',
  'label' => 'Products',
  'fields' => [
    ['name' => 'title', 'type' => 'text', 'required' => true, 'label' => 'Title'],
    ['name' => 'slug', 'type' => 'text', 'required' => true, 'slug' => true],
    ['name' => 'description', 'type' => 'wysiwyg', 'label' => 'Description'],
    ['name' => 'price', 'type' => 'number', 'label' => 'Price'],
    ['name' => 'image', 'type' => 'asset', 'label' => 'Photo'],
    ['name' => 'gallery', 'type' => 'gallery', 'label' => 'Gallery'],
    ['name' => 'category', 'type' => 'collectionlink', 'link' => 'categories'],
    ['name' => 'published', 'type' => 'boolean', 'default' => false],
    ['name' => 'publishedAt', 'type' => 'date'],
  ],
  'sortable' => true,
  'in_menu' => true,
];

Cockpit Field Types

Singleton

A Singleton differs from a Collection in that it stores a single set of values:

// Singleton "homepage" structure
{
  "fields": [
    { "name": "hero_title", "type": "text" },
    { "name": "hero_subtitle", "type": "textarea" },
    { "name": "hero_image", "type": "asset" },
    { "name": "featured_posts", "type": "collectionlink", "link": "posts", "multiple": true },
    { "name": "seo_title", "type": "text" },
    { "name": "seo_description", "type": "textarea" }
  ]
}

Using Repeater for Content Blocks

Repeater allows the editor to add any number of identical blocks:

{
  "name": "features",
  "type": "repeater",
  "label": "Features",
  "fields": [
    { "name": "icon", "type": "asset" },
    { "name": "title", "type": "text" },
    { "name": "description", "type": "textarea" }
  ]
}

Setting up 3–5 collections with typical fields and relationships takes 4–8 hours.