Demo Store with Commerce.js and Next.js 🛍️💳

A high-fidelity fully-fledged eCommerce demo store built using the Commerce.js SDK and Next.js with live deployment to Netlify.

Note

• This app is built using Commerce.js v2 SDK

Overview

This README will guide you in getting up and running with a fully-fledged eCommerce template. We have configured this template for you to one-click deploy directly to Netlify. Alternatively, you can manually deploy to your choice of hosting platform.

For a full detailed tutorial on building this JAMstack eCommerce application, please head on over here.

Prerequisites

• IDE or code editor of your choice
• Node (v8.2.0 or higher)
• NPM or Yarn
• Chec CLI yarn global add @chec/cli

Setup

Create a Chec account.

Now that you’ve installed Chec CLI globally, you will be able to access the list of chec [COMMANDS], one of which is registering for a Chec account. Let’s go ahead and get that set up!

# Open the Chec registration page in your browser
chec register

Follow the rest of the walk-through to set up your merchant details. Alternatively, you can go here to register for a Chec account.

One-click Deploy with Netlify (recommended)

The one-click deploy allows you to connect Netlify to your GitHub account to clone the commercejs-nextjs-demo-store repository and deploy it automatically. Be sure to go to Netlify and sign up for an account before clicking the deploy button.

By clicking the above button, you will be navigated to the Netlify’s direct deploy page with the project’s repository passed as parameters in the url. Click the Connect to GitHub button, name your repository and enter in this public key in the Chec Public Key input. Please note that for the purpose of getting you up and running with a live deploy preview of the demo store, we provided you with the Public Key from our demo merchant account. Now, save & deploy your site.

Please note the initial build will fail if you enter in your public key instead of the provided demo merchant key. The one-click deploy is meant for presentation purposes to spin up a quick deploy. Using your merchant account would mean you would need to have the appropriate data such as multiple assets and categories associated with your products. If you would like to use your merchant account, please follow the manual setup steps below.

Manual setup and Netlify deployment

Manual setup involves cloning the repo into your local environment, seeding the provided sample data into your Chec account and deploying to Netlify.

STEP 1. Clone the repo and install dependencies

# Clone the repository locally, optionally rename the repo, change into the directory
git clone https://github.com/chec/commercejs-nextjs-demo-store.git chec-store 
# Change into the directory and install dependencies
cd chec-store && yarn

STEP 2. Set up your environment variables

Replace the sample .env.example dotenv file at the root of the project to store your Chec public_key as well as your secret_key.

# Copy from source file to destination file .env
cp .env.example .env

You can access your API key under in your Chec dashboard setup, then navigate to the Develop tab to copy your Public Key and Secret Key. Replace the provided CHEC_PUBLIC_KEY with your own and fill in your CHEC_SECRET_KEY in the .env file. The secret key is necessary for the seed script to have the proper permission to seed the sample data in /seeds into your Chec account. Remove the secret key once the data is seeded.

// .env

# Fill in your public key and secret key
CHEC_PUBLIC_KEY=
CHEC_API_URL=https://api.chec.io
# Secret key is used with chec/seeder to access your Chec account to seed it with sample data
CHEC_SECRET_KEY=
NODE_ENV=

This file is meant to not be committed to source control and also will be hidden in file browsers.

STEP 3. Seed the data necessary to power your Chec store and start your development environment (necessary for initial setup).

# Seed data in /seeds into your Chec account
yarn seed
# Run your development environment on http://localhost:3000
yarn dev

Now head on over to http://localhost:3000 after starting your development, your site should now be populated with the sample data!

If you are replacing the sample products, be sure to add new categories in the dashboard, associate your products with them and lastly replace the slug and link values here.

STEP 5. Make any necessary changes you need and push the code to a repository on Github or your choice of platform.

STEP 6. Deploy your site

Be sure to sign up for a Netlify account and log in to it. Click the New site from Git button and give access to select your repo. Your build settings are automatically filled out for your from the netlify.toml in the template. To enter your environment variables, click Show advanced then New variable and fill in the key input as CHEC_PUBLIC_KEY and the value input with your Public Key. You can access your API key in your Chec dashboard under Setup, then navigate to the Developer tab to copy your Public Key

Now go ahead and click the "deploy site" to see your live site!

Setup using Chec CLI demo-store command

This command will download this example project from GitHub and initialise it on your machine. You will be free to edit the downloaded code and play around with Commerce.js afterwards.

STEP 1. Install the Chec CLI

npm install -g @chec/cli
# or
yarn add -g @chec/cli

STEP 2. Create a demo store

chec demo-store

When prompted to choose a demo store from the list, choose "commercejs-nextjs-demo-store". This command will also seed some sample data to your Chec account. For more information, see the Chec CLI documentation.

Caveats with data customization (IMPORTANT)

Because this project is a fully fledged storefront showcasing a custom design and user flow, there are certain caveats you will run into if you customize your data in the Chec Dashboard. One gotcha is with the categories data in the UI: additional collections data was added here and merged with the categories data in the API. If you add new or edit the seeded sample categories data, make sure to match up the slugs/permalink values in the collections data file. The app will expect the below inventory setup in order to build, so if you'd like to customize with your inventory in the backend make sure you:

• Create your categories in the dashboard
• Replace the collections data with the associated slugs and link paths to your created categories (this makes sure the collections images get merged into the collections data by matching the slugs).
• If you want multiple assets to your products similar to the demo stores, you can create assets and assign them to your products. This guide walks through how to achieve this.

🥞 Stack

• Framework - Next.js
• eCommerce - Chec/Commerce.js
• Hosting - Netlify
• Styling - Bootstrap and SASS

Customization and Extendability

• Add shipping zones and enable shipping options in each product
• Customizing the styling
  • All global styles are done using SASS and Bootstrap
• A/B testing unique checkout designs and flow
• Integrating other backend tools like Content Management Systems, Customer Support, Fulfillment services, and more.
• Fetching real client reviews from reviews APIs
• Adding search functionality
• Leveraging webhooks to automate post checkout actions