Unlock the Power of Headless Ecommerce with Vendure
In the world of ecommerce, flexibility and customization are key to success. That’s where Vendure comes in – a revolutionary headless ecommerce framework built with TypeScript and Node.js. With its robust feature set, including products and variants, stock management, payment provider integrations, and shipping provider integrations, Vendure is poised to change the game.
What Does “Headless” Mean?
You may have heard the term “API-first” or “headless” thrown around, but what does it really mean? In a nutshell, a headless ecommerce framework provides your content as data over an API, giving you the freedom to choose your own technology stack. This decoupling from traditional CMS systems allows for unparalleled flexibility and customization.
Our Tech Stack of Choice
In this tutorial, we’ll be using Next.js, GraphQL, and Apollo Client to unlock the full potential of Vendure. Here’s a brief overview of each:
- Next.js: A React framework offering zero-config, static generation, server-side rendering, and file-system routing, among other features.
- GraphQL: A query language for APIs that allows you to request only the data you need, reducing overhead and improving performance.
- Apollo Client: A state management library that enables you to manage remote and local data with GraphQL, featuring declarative data fetching, modern React features, and universal compatibility.
Getting Started with Vendure
To get started with Vendure, you’ll need:
- Node.js v10.13.0 or above
- NPM v5.2 or above or Yarn v0.25 or above
- Windows Build Tools installed (if on Windows)
Once you’ve met these requirements, you can run Vendure Create and answer a few questions about your project. For this tutorial, we’ll be using SQLite as our database.
Running Vendure Locally
After installation, navigate to your project directory and run the following command:
npm run dev
This will start your Vendure server, and you can access the admin dashboard at http://localhost:3000/admin/. Log in with your admin username and password, and you’ll be ready to add and view products.
Integrating Next.js and GraphQL with Vendure
To integrate Next.js and GraphQL with Vendure, we’ll need to set up our GraphQL playground and Apollo Client. First, let’s explore the data available at http://localhost:3000/shop-api. This will bring up the GraphQL playground, where you can view all available queries and mutations.
Building Our Store
Now that we have our data, let’s create our store. We’ll start by adding some products to our catalog. You can do this by clicking on the “New Product” button and filling in the required information.
Adding CSS and Building the Store Homepage
To add some style to our store, we’ll be using Material-UI. Let’s install it and create a ProductCard.js component to display our products. We’ll also define some CSS to center our product cards and make them responsive.
Building Our Shopping Cart/Checkout Process
One of the coolest things about GraphQL is its ability to update data using mutations. We’ll use the useMutation hook to update our data and get the loading state, error, and success state. Let’s take a look at the addItemToOrder mutation to start building out our checkout process.
Deploying Your Vendure Application
Finally, deploying your Vendure application is as simple as deploying a Node.js application. You can run it on a server and use nginx as a reverse proxy to direct requests to your Vendure application.
The Future of Ecommerce
Vendure offers a fresh perspective on modern ecommerce, focusing on developer productivity and ease of customization. With its robust feature set and flexibility, Vendure is an excellent choice for any small business looking to get an ecommerce site up and running quickly.