Jamstack eCommerce 101

JAMstack is an acronym for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup Stack. It is a modern architecture used to build web applications, where websites are plain HTML pages pre-generated by static site generators during build time, enhancing flexibility and performance.

Headless commerce is the practice of separating the front end and back end of an ecommerce store. It allows for more flexibility, better performance, and efficient development by decoupling the presentation layer from core business transactions.

Commerce Layer is a headless commerce platform and order management system that lets developers add global shopping capabilities to their presentation layer with ease. It provides several commerce APIs to handle transactional functionalities of an ecommerce platform.

Headless commerce offers benefits such as speed and flexibility, improved security and reliability, and modularity. It allows developers to work on independent models, makes it easier to leverage JAMstack for faster performance, and enables the reuse of functionalities across different parts of the application.

JAMstack improves web development by allowing the separation of the UI from data, similar to mobile app development. It enhances flexibility and performance, enabling the use of third-party APIs to encapsulate server-side functionalities and dynamic content.

Commerce Layer enables global ecommerce by allowing businesses to sell in multiple markets with independent business logic without data duplication. It provides APIs to manage transactions and integrates with any CMS to handle content, making it easier to add international shopping capabilities.

SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) in Commerce Layer are unique identifiers for each product item and its variations within an ecommerce system. They help track availability, manage inventory, and link product information between the content management system and Commerce Layer.

In Commerce Layer, an order process involves creating an order in draft state, selecting items (SKUs), adding shipping and billing information, applying discounts (if any), selecting a shipping method, and finally, confirming and fulfilling the order.

The workshop uses tools and technologies such as Commerce Layer, JAMstack, static site generators, APIs, headless CMSs like Strapi, JavaScript, and various libraries like Lodash and js-cookie for building and managing an ecommerce platform.

You can seed an organization with test data in Commerce Layer using the CLI by running commands like 'clayer seed' with a resource URL. This process imports demo content such as addresses, SKUs, stock locations, and other ecommerce resources into your Commerce Layer organization.