PWA, WebAssembly and GraphQL – 2018 new tech trends and what a web developer needs to know

After another tech giant Facebook adapted the PWA, it seems PWA has become one of the most popular technical terms for current web development.

Reference: “Facebook takes first steps in Progressive Web Apps (PWA)”

 

As you can see there are two trends for the web development in 2018 that you (a web developer) should be very well aware of:

  1. PWA – will be integrated to Magento 2.3 with PWA studio – this will instantly enable most of PWA features for Magento on mobile platforms
  2. GraphQL – this is another Facebook invention, it’s becoming more and more popular and it's going to replace RESTful API and XML based web services.

 

By the end of the year PWA and GraphQL would be very likely to become main stream since more and more big players are coming onboard.

 

Coming from a PHP / Laravel background I’ve leant Vue.js and used it in the production, however Magento 2.3 will be released with React as the front-end PWA choice. What's more, because React had performance advantage over other frameworks, so if you are new to PWA, maybe it’s the best choice to start learning React PWA since learning it could provide the best value return in the near future.

 

Just quote it here from “What to Expect from Magento in 2018” (https://trellis.co/blog/expect-magento-2018/):

“In mid-2018, Magento will introduce Progressive Web Applications (PWA) to the platform with Magento PWA Studio. The suite of tools will allow users to build online stores as PWA’s and serve as a learning tool for developers.”

……

“The studio will introduce the new GraphQL 1.0 API style to the API collection.”

For more information, you can read about Magento PWA Studio here.

Further reading:

First Windows 10 Progressive Web Apps (PWA) published by Microsoft hit the Store https://www.windowscentral.com/first-batch-windows-10-progressive-web-apps-here

On the other hand, Golang has officially added the WebAssembly architecture to its road map and had the first commit to the compiler not long ago. Here is the technological statement of WebAssembly architecture for Go.

The WebAssembly architecture will allow Go to become an alternative to JavaScript for writing code that runs in a web browser. This new freedom of choice will hopefully have a positive impact on the software engineering ecosystem overall.

Now it's becoming more interesting.

Magento Marketplace / B2B related extensions and solutions

Found some of the Magento extensions are quite sophisiticated and built-ready, while searching for the B2B solutions.

These could help you to come up with a Magento B2B / Marketplace e-commerce platform very quick.

Magento Builder Theme
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/frontend-builder-theme.html ($9.00)

B2B / Market place
[Recommended] https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/marketplace.html (Magento Marketplace Multi Vendor Module US$349.00)
[Membership addon] http://webkul.com/blog/magento-marketplace-membership/ (US$149.00)
[Marketplace Mobile App] https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/marketplace-mobile-app.html (US$599.00)
author: https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/developer/webkul
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/b2b-suite.html (US$250.00)
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/marketplace-2.html (FREE)

Membership
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/membership-program-for-magento.html (US$199.00)
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/marketplace-membership.html (US$149.00)
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/membership-subscription.html (US$149.00)
OR build with Magento recurring profile (membership as a vitual product with recurring payment requirement):
http://docs.magento.com/m1/ce/user_guide/catalog/product-recurring-profile.html

Payment gateway - WestPac and eWay
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/fontis-westpac-payway-and-quickgateway.html (FREE) [up to Magento 1.7]
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/fontis-eway-au.html (FREE) [eWay transaction fee: 1.6% per transaction]
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/eway-rapid-australia.html (FREE)

Vtiger CRM Integration
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/vtiger-magento-integration.html (US$299.99)
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/vtiger-crm-integration.html (US$149.00)

Magento Cards/Knowledge, Developer reference, Code Snippets, and netz98 magerun CLI tools

Some of the useful Magento tools and references:

Magento Code Snippets

This GitHub page gives you a lot of very useful Magento Code Snippets

https://gist.github.com/arosenhagen/2397824

 

netz98 magerun CLI tools

The swiss army knife for Magento developers, sysadmins and devops. The tool provides a huge set of well tested command line commands which save hours of work time. All commands are extendable by a module API. http://magerun.net/

on GitHub: https://github.com/netz98/n98-magerun

Magento cards

A simple knowledge base for Magento development including code snippets, tips and tricks, commands, configurations and many more other topics.

https://makandracards.com/magento

Magento for Developers: Part 4—Magento Layouts, Blocks and Templates

The official dev guide for Magento 1.x

http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/m1x/magefordev/mage-for-dev-4.html

 

Combine Magento with Angular – Magento-on-Angular

This project brought Magento together with Angular, however it looked like no longer being developed, the latest release was dated Jun 30, 2015.

https://github.com/Wildhoney/Magento-on-Angular

Moa

Tired of Magento's lack of unit testing? Configuration over convention? Use of Prototype.js? Badly written JavaScript? Untested third-party modules? Likewise! Moa brings Magento into the 21st century.