I am new to Squarespace and I was wondering if it can interact with an external Rest-API using JSON?
For example, say I have a Database being hosted privately and I want data from it to be shown via Squarespace and certain pages being restricted according to the user's privileges.
Is any of the above possible, and if so can you direct me to an example? I seem not to be able to find anything on the above via google.
Thanks
From Squarespace:
Squarespace doesn’t support server-side code, including PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and SQL.
Therefore, the only way to connect to an external API (besides those supported by Squarespace's official 'extensions') is to use "client-side" (in-browser) JavaScript.
So, the database solution which you use must be capable of securely handling client-side connections (for example, Firebase can do that). To interface with it, you must add the JavaScript to your Squarespace site via code block or code injection. An example explanation of doing that can be found at this question.
As to allowing/disallowing content based on data returned from the database, it can be done, but only client-side. That means that, while you can make the site appear to restrict access and/or make it inconvenient for others to access certain pages based on information in the database, because it is all client-side, it could technically be circumvented by someone if they are familiar with web-development, web-inspector, etc. So it's not something you'd want to do if it is critical that the content be truly restricted.
Squarespace does have its own "Members Areas" which can be used to solve content access problems. However, it's extremely limited at the moment, and there are many scenarios it does not address.