Contentful Personalization & Analytics

Optimization Web Preview Panel

This package implements the first-party browser preview panel for the Optimization Web SDK. It loads into the DOM as a Lit-based Web Component micro-frontend and talks to the Web SDK through the preview bridge exposed by the Optimization Web SDK runtime.

[!IMPORTANT]

Upgrading from v1? Follow the v1-to-v2 migration guide and align this package with the upgraded Web SDK packages.

Getting started

Install using an NPM-compatible package manager, pnpm for example:

pnpm add @contentful/optimization-web-preview-panel

Import the attach function; both CJS and ESM module systems are supported, ESM preferred:

import attachOptimizationPreviewPanel from '@contentful/optimization-web-preview-panel'

Attach the preview panel with an existing, unmodified Contentful Delivery API client. By default, the attach function uses the browser singleton created by the Optimization Web SDK:

attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({
  contentful: contentfulClient,
})

When your application already fetches preview content, pass entries instead:

attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({
  entries: {
    audiences: audienceEntries,
    experiences: experienceEntries,
  },
})

The attach function appends the panel to the DOM and adds the toggle button that opens it. It is safe to call more than once; repeated calls reuse the in-flight or completed panel attachment. The panel search uses fuzzy matching for audience and optimization names and highlights matched text in the result list.

[!IMPORTANT]

Importing this package has no side effects. It does not attach the panel, define custom elements, inject styles, touch storage, or mutate globals until attachOptimizationPreviewPanel(...) is called.

When to use this package

Use @contentful/optimization-web-preview-panel when a Web SDK or React Web SDK integration needs the browser preview panel attached to an existing Contentful SDK client. Application code can pass an explicit Optimization Web SDK instance, but the common browser flow uses window.contentfulOptimization.

Pre-fetched entries

Use entries when the app cannot give the browser preview panel a direct Contentful client or when it already owns the query layer. This covers GraphQL query adapters, Hydrogen loaders, SSR data handoff, tag-filtered Contentful queries, and proxy APIs.

The entries option has this shape:

attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({
  entries: {
    audiences,
    experiences,
  },
})

Each value can be either a Contentful-style entry collection or a readonly array of Contentful entries. The preview panel normalizes arrays into entry collections, keeps only nt_audience items from audiences, keeps only nt_experience items from experiences, and preserves experiences.includes.Entry so linked variant names can be displayed.

If both entries and contentful are provided, entries wins and the preview panel does not fetch through the Contentful client.

Common paths:

• Contentful client - Pass contentful first when the browser can use an existing Contentful Delivery API client.
• GraphQL - Map GraphQL nodes to Contentful entry objects, then pass the arrays as entries.audiences and entries.experiences.
• Hydrogen loaders and SSR - Load audiences and experiences in the loader or server route, serialize them to the browser, then attach with entries.
• Tag-filtered queries - Pass the filtered Contentful collections directly. The panel still filters by content type before building definitions.
• Proxy APIs - Return { audiences, experiences } from the proxy and pass that object as entries.

Common configuration

Provide either contentful or entries.

For the complete attach function signature, use the generated Preview Panel reference.

Production bundle control

The preview panel is intended for development and staging builds. Consumers own that build policy and can wrap the attachment call in an environment-backed conditional:

import attachOptimizationPreviewPanel from '@contentful/optimization-web-preview-panel'

if (import.meta.env.PUBLIC_OPTIMIZATION_ENABLE_PREVIEW_PANEL === 'true') {
  void attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({ contentful: contentfulClient })
}

When the consumer bundler replaces that condition with a build-time false value and performs dead-code elimination, the side-effect-free preview panel import graph can be removed from the production output.

Content security policy support

In strict CSP environments, pass a nonce directly:

attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({ contentful: contentfulClient, nonce })

Alternatively, set window.litNonce before attaching the panel:

window.litNonce = nonce
attachOptimizationPreviewPanel({ contentful: contentfulClient })

Related

• Preview Panel generated reference - exported attach function reference
• Optimization Web SDK - browser SDK that provides the preview bridge
• Optimization React Web SDK - React layer commonly used with the preview panel
• React Web integration guide - preview setup in a React application