How to effortlessly create free e-commerce app using React and Nodejs

There are also a few frontend platforms into which you can integrate e-commerce functionalities, like Next.js, a lightweight framework for static and server-rendered apps. Finally, we’ve chosen for this post? React E-commerce Builder. We’ll integrate it with our shopping cart for developers. The result should be a neat, React-powered e-commerce app!

Why Should you use React for e-commerce?

A common E-commerce website usually comprises a plethora of forms to fill, complex filters, elements, which interact with different APIs, maps, etc. With the help of React, you can easily implement all of those features, making it a good option to build highly interactive E-commerce websites.

One of the great things about React is that it allows for a rather convenient way of storing and manipulating the state of your app (e.g. filtering through items is a change in the state of the app). What’s more, React comes with a whole bunch of ready-made modules for all occasions, not mentioning that it’s easy to test and scale.

It has been at the forefront of frontend web development for a few years now. It boasts a constellation of stars at the top of its GitHub repo. It’s used by tech behemoths like Airbnb, Netflix, and Instagram. It was created by Facebook developers for Pete’s sake! Saying it’s trendy is an understatement.

React has proven its awesomeness more than enough. With its component-centric development, Virtual DOM, JSX syntax, etc. it has changed frontend development for the best.

Features:

The use of components for flexibility:

• Popularity & vast community for peace of mind:

If you’re a merchant, it shouldn’t be too hard to find developers to maintain your React e-commerce app. If you’re a developer, any issue has probably already been documented. Also, the ecosystem has spawned dozens of excellent dev tools to optimize React development.

• Have a look at React e-commerce tools:

A couple of solutions will let you kickstart your e-commerce development with React:

• Moltin — An API-based e-commerce solution. It allows you to use React natively to power your applications.
• Cezerin — A React & Node.js-based e-commerce platform. Enables the creation of PWAs.
• Reaction Commerce — Open-source, real-time platform. Built on Node.js, but plays nice with React.

React E-commerce Builder is a React and Node.js based eCommerce platform. The project has two components i.e. client (react) and server-side (node.js). Please download or clone the respective components and follow the instructions for the setup.

Client:

The React E-commerce is a project relying on [ React] a powerful javascript library for building the user interface. In this project, I tried to show some features of react/react components as an e-commerce platform. The structure of this project gives the ability to the developer to develop their project on their own idea and environment.

Features:

• Product listing

Product Listing Page

• Search the product by text
• Product Details
• SignIn and Signup
• Add to cart
• Payment through PayPal
• Update Shipping Details

Structure:

The current structure could make the project easy to change and scale up. Using the current structure we are able to develop the mobile app in parallel with web app only with changing Components layer. It means we can keep Core, Data layers, Actions, Reducers, etc. What we have high reusability and fast in producing the products. So here is the structure of the project:

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes. See deployment for notes on how to deploy the project on a live system.

Prerequisites

Install NodeJs

Note

• If you’re using Windows you should install all node-gyp dependencies with following commands:

$ npm install --global --production windows-build-tools

• and then install the package

npm install --global node-gyp

Installing

• Download the source code file or clone it from https://github.com/ipragmatechadmin/React-Ecommerce-Builder.
• Go to the project root directory

cd client

• To install node dependencies use

npm install
OR
yarn install

• Open environment config and set the APIs URL. React E-commerce is able to be connected with current Node Web APIs.
• Once the Installation done, we are ready to use the e-commerce app.

npm start
or
yarn start

Server:

An eCommerce platform for Node web APIs focused on the separation of concerns and scalability. The app is deployed on Heroku and APIs documentation is available at https://ipragmatech-ecommmerce.herokuapp.com/api/docs

Quick Start:

This platform has basic web APIs for the e-commerce app. The platform uses backend as a MySQL database but can be used for other platforms like firebase, dynamodb, etc.

• Download the source code file or clone it from https://github.com/ipragmatechadmin/React-Ecommerce-Builder.
• Setup the database on config/database.js with the MySQL database configurations.
• Go to the root directory server

cd server

• Install the dependencies with yarn or npm (click here if you don't have Yarn installed)

npm install
OR
yarn install

• Create the development and test databases you have set up on config/database.js:

module.exports = {
  development: {
    username: 'root',
    password: 'admin123',
    database: 'ecommerce',
    host: 'localhost',
    dialect: 'mysql'
  },
  test: {
    username: 'root',
    password: 'admin123',
    database: 'ecommerce',
    host: 'localhost',
    dialect: 'mysql',
    dialectModule: 'mysql2',
    logging: null
  },
  production: process.env.DATABASE_URL
};

• Run the database script located at src/infra/database scripts. This shall create the sample data along with tables and stored procedures.
• If MySQL is not present with the local system, download the MYSQL to the system.
• Start the MYSQL Server and import the database tables like:

cd src/infra/database
mysql -u root -p ecommerce <ecommerce.sql
enter password

• For Database backup, there is a need to export the database like:

cd desktop
mysqldump -u root -p ecommerce > ecommerce.sql
Enter password

• Run the application in development mode like:

npm run dev

• Access http://localhost:3000/api/docs and you can check the APIs documentation. You can test the APIs by changing the base URL. you're ready to go!

Script:

This boilerplate comes with a collection of npm scripts to make your life easier, you’ll run them with npm run <script name> or yarn run <script name>:

• dev: Run the application in development mode
• start Run the application in production mode (prefer not to do that in development)
• test: Run the test suite
• test:unit: Run only the unit tests
• test:features: Run only the features tests
• test:single: Run only the single test case
• coverage: Run only the unit tests and generate code coverage for them, the output will be on coverage folder
• lint: Lint the codebase
• sequelize: Alias to the Sequelize CLI
• console: Open the built-in console, you can access the DI container through the container variable once it's open, the console is promise-friendly. Click here to know more about the built-in console

Demo App

• Live Demo

Conclusion

In this article, you would know how to create an e-commerce app with react-redux. Create a UI in the React component. Redux manages the states and properties and the data is stored in the local or may use the Heroku. After reading this article, you will know that how can you run an e-commerce app. Feel free to ask any query, glad to hear from you.

References

• React E-Commerce Builder
• States and property management with Redux

Suggestions for further reading

• How effortlessly create free social media app like facebook
• Easy and scalable solution for mysql database backup to AWS S3 bucket
• Building a real world app using React, Redux, Firebase, and Typescript
• React Redux Firebase With Firestore Tutorial

Originally published at https://www.ipragmatech.com on July 13, 2019.