Experience Edge

Experience Edge is a GraphQL API-based service endpoint that allows you to retrieve layout and content, distributed through a CDN, and hosted by Sitecore. Experience Edge is the publishing target of different Sitecore products: XM, XM Cloud, Content Hub, and Content Hub One. You can build your solution in any language and pull the content you need, using a GraphQL interface.

A diagram showing the relationship between Sitecore XM and Experience Edge content distribution.

Experience Edge is a publishing target for your Sitecore content and media, and provides a GraphQL API that lets you:

  • Traverse the content tree by ID or path.

  • Obtain a snapshot of the Layout Service output for a route, for use with Sitecore Headless SDKs such as the Next.js SDK.

  • Perform Boolean queries for items based on field values and other item properties.

Advantages of Experience Edge

Experience Edge provides a scalable, managed delivery option for headless Sitecore architectures that has the following advantages:

  • Removes infrastructure complexity - remove or reduce the need for hosting Content Delivery servers in your Sitecore infrastructure.

  • Scalability - globally replicate and scale your Sitecore content delivery.

  • Reaches customers across all channels - publish Sitecore content to any device or channel (watches, phones, tablets, voice-controlled devices, and so on).

  • Integrates with any platform - all applications that are able to make API calls out can pull content in from GraphQL.

For Jamstack architectures, in particular, Experience Edge provides an API that can be used for both initial static markup generation, and runtime data needs such as client-side fetch (AJAX) calls and incremental static regeneration.

For details on using Experience Edge with Sitecore JavaScript SDKs, see the JSS documentation.

To learn about the restrictions involved in using Experience Edge, refer to Limitations and restrictions of Experience Edge.

Usage

Experience Edge offers 3 endpoints for managing your implementation:

  • Delivery API - access your approved and published content. Use this API for all production-related actions.

  • Token API - used for authenticating to the Delivery API.

  • Admin API - manage your Edge configurations and create webhooks.

Experience Edge also includes these features to help you integrate in a way that aligns with existing workflows and business needs:

  • Use Webhooks to receive an automated notification every time a publishing job finishes, or every time your published content is updated. You can use this, for example, to trigger a validation flow for changed content in your front-end application.

  • IDEs

  • Use the Experience Edge plugin for the Sitecore CLI to manage your Edge tenant in a familiar development environment.

Video: What is Sitecore Experience Edge?

For a general introduction to Sitecore Experience Edge, watch the following video:

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