Reading time with a hook

What you'll build

A "minutes to read" number that the CMS computes on every save and editors can see but not change. Uses: hooks, field access.

1. The field

{
  name: 'readingTime',
  type: 'number',
  label: { en: 'Reading time (min)', th: 'เวลาอ่าน (นาที)' },
  position: 'sidebar',
  // Read-only in the admin and the API; the hook below sets it.
  access: { update: () => false },
}

Field access only filters what people send; hooks can still set the value.

2. The hook

npm

npm install @easy-cms/richtext

pnpm

pnpm add @easy-cms/richtext

yarn

yarn add @easy-cms/richtext

bun

bun add @easy-cms/richtext

import { richTextToPlainText } from '@easy-cms/richtext'

const WORDS_PER_MINUTE = 200

function minutes(body: unknown): number {
  const words = richTextToPlainText(body as never).split(/\s+/).filter(Boolean).length
  return Math.max(1, Math.round(words / WORDS_PER_MINUTE))
}

// In the posts collection:
hooks: {
  beforeChange: [
    ({ data }) => (data.body === undefined ? data : { ...data, readingTime: minutes(data.body) }),
  ],
},

On an update that doesn't touch body, data.body is missing and the old value stays.

Thai text

Thai has no spaces between words, so counting words by spaces undercounts. Count characters instead, roughly 800–1,000 per minute for Thai: Math.round(richTextToPlainText(body).length / 900).

3. Fill existing posts

The hook runs on save. To fill posts that already exist, save each once:

const cms = await getEasyCMS(config) // or useEasyCMS() in Nuxt
const { docs } = await cms.find('posts', { limit: 0, draft: true, depth: 0 })
for (const post of docs) await cms.update('posts', post.id, { body: post.body })