Limitations on Webflow Backend Development

Design help Custom code
1

I’m currently building a NodeJS web application and I was wondering how well the integration between Webflow and NodeJS is. I’ve seen some posts saying that the only way you can get it to work is to export the HTML/CSS/JS and use a tool or plugin to turn it into React/Vue elements. However, I’m not using a NodeJS framework for my web application, I’m writing everything from scratch.

Is there a way for Webflow in the backend to make an API call to my NodeJS server to retrieve personalised content? I know that you can add JavaScript to the header and footer of web pages, but that won’t work for me because it means people can “View page source” and see my code (which would be a major security risk for me).

Is there a similar functionality to adding JavaScript to the head and footer, but add it to the backend before the page even loads? So my website workflow looks a bit like this:

  1. Someone clicks on a link to my Webflow page
  2. Webflow in the backend makes an API call to my NodeJS server
  3. My NodeJS server does what it needs to do and sends back a JSON object
  4. Webflow then uses the data in the JSON object to personalise the content

If anyone could help me with integrating my NodeJS backend with a Webflow front end, that would be great. I love Webflow and would like to continue using it :slight_smile:

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No. You have only the API and webhooks for events. There is no way to do what you want to with WF.

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No Webflow doesn’t support this. The best you can do is to do everything on the front end and use user auth. This way you can send the user’s JWT with all their requests and verify this on your back end before responding.