/commerce

Next.js Commerce

Primary LanguageTypeScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Deploy with Vercel

Next.js Commerce

A Next.js 13 and App Router-ready ecommerce template featuring:

  • Next.js App Router
  • Optimized for SEO using Next.js's Metadata
  • React Server Components (RSCs) and Suspense
  • Server Actions for mutations
  • Edge Runtime
  • New fetching and caching paradigms
  • Dynamic OG images
  • Styling with Tailwind CSS
  • Checkout and payments with Shopify
  • Automatic light/dark mode based on system settings

Note: Looking for Next.js Commerce v1? View the code, demo, and release notes

Providers

Vercel will only be actively maintaining a Shopify version as outlined in our vision and strategy for Next.js Commerce.

Vercel is more than happy to partner and work with any commerce provider to help them get a similar template up and running and listed below. Alternative providers should be able to fork this repository and swap out the lib/shopify file with their own implementation while leaving the rest of the template mostly unchanged.

Running locally

You will need to use the environment variables defined in .env.example to run Next.js Commerce. It's recommended you use Vercel Environment Variables for this, but a .env file is all that is necessary.

Note: You should not commit your .env file or it will expose secrets that will allow others to control your Shopify store.

  1. Install Vercel CLI: npm i -g vercel
  2. Link local instance with Vercel and GitHub accounts (creates .vercel directory): vercel link
  3. Download your environment variables: vercel env pull
pnpm install
pnpm dev

Your app should now be running on localhost:3000.

How to configure your Shopify store for Next.js Commerce

Next.js Commerce requires a paid Shopify plan.

Note: Next.js Commerce will not work with a Shopify Starter plan as it does not allow installation of custom themes, which is required to run as a headless storefront.

Add Shopify domain to an environment variable

Create a SHOPIFY_STORE_DOMAIN environment variable and use your Shopify domain as the the value (ie. SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com).

Note: Do not include the https://.

Accessing the Shopify Storefront API

Next.js Commerce utilizes Shopify's Storefront API to create unique customer experiences. The API offers a full range of commerce options making it possible for customers to control products, collections, menus, pages, cart, checkout, and more.

In order to use the Shopify's Storefront API, you need to install the Headless app in your Shopify store.

Once installed, you'll need to create a SHOPIFY_STOREFRONT_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable and use the public access token as the value

Note: Shopify does offer a Node.js Storefront API SDK. We use the Storefront API via GraphQL directly instead of the Node.js SDK so we have more control over fetching and caching.

Expand to view detailed walkthrough
  1. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/settings/apps.
  2. Click the green Shopify App Store button. Shopify App Store
  3. Search for Headless and click on the Headless app. Headless
  4. Click the black Add app button. Add app
  5. Click the green Add sales channel button. Add sales channel
  6. Click the green Create storefront button. Create storefront
  7. Copy and paste the public access token and assign it to a SHOPIFY_STOREFRONT_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable. Pubic access token
  8. If you ever need to reference the public access token again, you can navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/headless_storefronts.

Install a headless theme

When using a headless Shopify setup, you normally don't want customers to access any of the theme pages except for checkout. However, you can't totally disable the theme and a lot of links will still point to the theme (e.g. links in emails, order details, plugins, checkout, etc.).

To enable a seamless flow between your headless site and Shopify, you can install the Shopify Headless Theme.

Follow the installation instructions and configure the theme with your headless site's values.

Expand to view detailed walkthrough
  1. Download Shopify Headless Theme. Download Shoify Headless Theme
  2. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/themes.
  3. Click Add theme, then Upload zip file. Upload zip file
  4. Select the downloaded zip file from above, and click the green Upload file button. Select and upload file
  5. Click Customize. Customize theme
  6. Click Theme settings (ie. the paintbrush icon), expand the STOREFRONT section, enter your headless store domain, click the gray Publish button. Set headless domain in theme settings
  7. Confirm the theme change by clicking the green Save and publish button. Confirm save and publish
  8. The headless theme should now be your current active theme. Headless theme is current and active

Branding & Design

Since you're creating a headless Shopify store, you'll be in full control of your brand and design. However, there are still a few aspects we're leaving within Shopify's control.

  • Checkout
  • Emails
  • Order status
  • Order history
  • Favicon (for any Shopify controlled pages)

You can use Shopify's admin to customize these pages to match your brand and design.

Expand to view detailed walkthrough

Checkout, order status, and order history

  1. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/settings/checkout.
  2. Click the green Customize button. Customize
  3. Click Branding (ie. the paintbrush icon) and customize your brand. Please note, there are three steps / pages to the checkout flow. Use the dropdown to change pages and adjust branding as needed on each page. Click Save when you are done. Branding
  4. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/settings/branding.
  5. Customize settings to match your brand. Branding

Emails

  1. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/settings/email_settings.
  2. Customize settings to match your brand. Branding

Favicon

  1. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/themes.
  2. Click the green Customize button. Customize theme
  3. Click Theme settings (ie. the paintbrush icon), expand the FAVICON section, upload favicon, then click the Save button. Favicon

Configure webhooks for on-demand incremental static regeneration (ISR)

Utilizing Shopify's webhooks, and listening for select Shopify webhook event topics, we can use Next'js on-demand revalidation to keep data fetches indefinitely cached until certain events in the Shopify store occur.

Next.js is pre-configured to listen for the following Shopify webhook events and automatically revalidate fetches.

  • collections/create
  • collections/delete
  • collections/update
  • products/create
  • products/delete
  • products/update (this also includes when variants are added, updated, and removed as well as when products are purchased so inventory and out of stocks can be updated)
Expand to view detailed walkthrough

Setup secret for secure revalidation

  1. Create your own secret or generate a random UUID.
  2. Create a Vercel Environment Variable named SHOPIFY_REVALIDATION_SECRET and use the value from above.

Configure Shopify webhooks

  1. Navigate to https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/settings/notifications.
  2. Add webhooks for all six event topics listed above. You can add more sets for other preview urls, environments, or local development. Append ?secret=[SECRET] to each url, where [SECRET] is the secret you created above. Shopify store webhooks Shopify store add webhook

Testing webhooks during local development

The easiest way to test webhooks while developing locally is to use ngrok.

  1. Install and configure ngrok (you will need to create an account).
  2. Run your app locally, npm run dev.
  3. In a separate terminal session, run ngrok http 3000.
  4. Use the url generated by ngrok and add or update your webhook urls in Shopify. ngrok Shopify store edit webhook
  5. You can now make changes to your store and your local app should receive updates. You can also use the Send test notification button to trigger a generic webhook test. Shopify store webhook send test notification

Using Shopify as a CMS

Next.js Commerce is fully powered by Shopify in a truly headless and data driven way.

Products

https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/products

Only Active products are shown. Draft products will not be shown until they are marked as Active.

Active products can still be hidden and not seen by navigating the site, by adding a nextjs-frontend-hidden tag on the product. This tag will also tell search engines to not index or crawl the product. The product is still directly accessible via url. This feature is great for "secret" products you only want to people you share the url with.

Product options and option combinations are driven from Shopify options and variants. When selecting options on the product detail page, other option and variant combinations will be visually validated and verified for availability, like Amazon does.

Products that are active and "out of stock" are still shown on the site, but the ability to add the product to the cart is disabled.

Collections

https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/collections

Create whatever collections you want and configure them however you want. All available collections will show on the search page as filters on the left, with one exception...

Any collection names that start with the word "hidden" will not show up on the headless front end. The Next.js Commerce theme comes pre-configured to look for two hidden collections. Collections were chosen for this over tags so that order of products could be controlled (collections allow for manual ordering).

Create the following collections:

  • Hidden: Homepage Featured Items -- Products in this collection are displayed in the three featured blocks on the homepage.
  • Hidden: Homepage Carousel -- Products in this collection are displayed in the auto-scrolling carousel section on the homepage.

Shopify collections

Shopify collection detail

Pages

https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/pages

Next.js Commerce contains a dynamic [page] route. It will use the value to look for a corresponding page in Shopify. If a page is found, it will display its rich content using Tailwind's prose. If a page is not found, a 404 page is displayed.

Shopify pages

Shopify page detail

Navigation menus

https://SHOPIFY_STORE_SUBDOMAIN.myshopify.com/admin/menus

Next.js Commerce's header and footer navigation is pre-configured to be controlled by Shopify navigation menus. This means you have full control over what links go here. They can be to collections, pages, external links, and more.

Create the following navigation menus:

  • Next.js Frontend Header Menu -- Menu items to be shown in the headless frontend header.
  • Next.js Frontend Footer Menu -- Menu items to be shown in the headless frontend footer.

Shopify navigation menus

Shopify navigation menu detail

SEO

Shopify's products, collections, pages, etc. allow you to create custom SEO titles and descriptions. Next.js Commerce is pre-configured to display these custom values, but also comes with sensible default fallbacks if they are not provided.

Shopify SEO