Everything you need to know about Magento PWA studio

Progressive Web Apps or PWA gain more and more popularity because of their up-to-date feature. Thanks to cutting-edge technology, it enhances the customer experience and brings more revenue to the business. Therefore, lots of companies applied this platform for online stores to utilize the advantage of PWA. Especially, many businesses choose progressive web apps on Magento. Then we will give you a detailed checklist about Magento PWA studio to help you become more accustomed to it.

An overview of PWA studio

What is Progressive Web App?

A progressive web app looks and feels like a native app, but works directly in mobile browsers. There is no need to download anything from an App Store. Customers get an app-like experience instantly in their browsers instead.

Feature of Progressive Web App

The capability of offline work: Service workers – the technology is responsible for that feature. Thus, it allows the app to store things offline and flexibly manage network requests to retrieve them. As a result, it leads to minimizing the amount of data we need to use to run the app.

Discoverability and easy installation: A PWA is a website with some extras that can be discovered through regular search engines like Google or Bing. Hence, users have no need to download anything from app stores. A PWA’s installation is really easy, it happens in the background during the first visit.

Usage of phone features: PWAs have a lot of possibilities to access device features on Android and a few less on iOS. The usage of cameras, GPS, or fingerprint scanners in an app-like way enriches the user’s experience.

Automatic updates: A PWA allows publishers to implement patches immediately. Moreover, it enables them to keep full control of the content. Customers always use the most current version of the application.

Safety: By using the HTTPS protocol, the data is safe because of encryption, and thus more difficult to intercept and change. Moreover, users perceive HTTPS as a guarantee of safety and reliability of publishers. And Google gives additional points in the search ranking for using it.

App-like feeling: The whole idea behind PWAs is finding a way to connect the best possible experience to an app-like one with the open nature of the web.

An outline of Magento PWA Studio

The origin of Magento PWA Studio

Magento has released a set of tools for all merchants who operate online stores. Magento PWA Studio is the name of this set of tools. It will save online retailers much time and money to develop native apps for all of the different operating systems.

Because of the tools to design app-like websites Magento, online merchants can increase their mobile conversion rate. It is the result of improving the cross-channel experience for the customers. Besides, Magento PWA allows it to behave like a native app for a better user experience.

Merchants can leverage blazing fast front-end architecture and open web APIs. It aids to transform their stores into what is swiftly becoming the new norm.

PWA Buildpack

The Buildpack contains the essential development and builds libraries and tools for creating a lightning-fast front-end and PWA. It allows you to arrange your local environment for PWA development.

PWA Storefront

PWA Storefront, also known as Venia Storefront, is a proof-of-concept PWA built with Peregrine tools and the PWA Buildpack. When learning about Magento PWA Studio and what it can achieve, the storefront shows samples of category pages and product details.

Peregrine

Magento’s Peregrine project, as previously noted, contains a set of tools and UI components for creating a Magento PWA. The components can be combined, extended, and blended to create unique Magento 2 PWA stores.

Some outstanding features of Magento PWA Studio

ReactJS – ReactJS performs very well and delivers an excellent shopping and developer experience.

Home Screen Alternative – Magento PWA provides a store that can be downloaded on the home screen. It will look and operate as a native app

Works Offline – PWA web apps can work both offline and online.  

Strong Back-End – Magento’s robust in-house backend offers a smooth user experience with few issues.

The advantage when using Magento PWA Studio 

Comprehensive Development Tools

Magento Studio gives the PWA development tools which are state-of-the-art and include thorough documentation. Users can quickly arrange their own local PWA development environments with them.

Easy Setup

Setting up PWAs from the backend is simple with Magento Studio. To successfully start the application, users must insert the Magento instance URL in the.env file. Then you will clone a repository, and run a command. It was evident from the start that ease of development was a top objective.

GraphQL

Because GraphQL employs declarative data fetching, PWAs developed with Magento Studio have nearly no over-fetching of queries. Then it is better able to accommodate multiple users from various sources.

Community Support

Magento is a well-known eCommerce platform, which has resulted in a large global community of Magento PWA users and collaborators.

The architecture and framework of the Magento PWA studio

The studio is really simple to set up and use to avoid mistakes from occurring early in the app development process. Developers are immediately warned when something is not properly arranged. This saves time when it comes to discovering and repairing bugs when the program is nearly complete.

The builder of the Magento PWA studio is ready to use 

There is no need to install the builder and spend time customizing and setting up the environment. Everything works right away with Magento PWA Studio after installation. Everything is all set up and ready to go.

Premade elements are adaptable

PWA Studio includes a large number of completed and ready-to-use website parts. When creating your website, you can use any or all of the elements in any combination. At this point, the prepared elements could be used exactly as they are. Even pre-made pieces can be modified to meet the needs of the developer or the consumer.

Perfectly simple routing and caching 

Magento PWA Studio’s routing and caching features are additional great qualities. Routing and caching are done in the same way they’ve always been done, with no changes. If you adopt the conventional Magento routing and caching technique, however, you will not need any participation with routing and caching.

Magento PWA Studio and the cons you will need to overcome

Single Platform

If you want to own Magento Studio, you need each store to run on Magento 2.3 and newer builds. Although it isn’t necessary to worry about compatibility, it is quite limiting.

Lack of Compatibility

When it comes to compatibility, Magento Studios’ GraphicQL feature renders it inappropriate with previous versions.

iOS Support Issues

Magento doesn’t support iOS PWA notifications and will not work with iOS devices that are not connected to the internet.

Validation Issues

When creating new client accounts, validation concerns can arise. This is especially true for iOS users when setting up a password. A notification cannot be delivered if the chosen password does not fulfill the password requirements.

How To Install Magento PWA Studio (With Version 2)

Step 1: Install the latest Magento version 

To install Magento PWA Studio, you must first have a Magento 2.3.x version installed. You can’t install Magento PWA Studio Project(2.3) without it, because no other Magento version supports it.

Step 2: Install NodeJS

After that, you’ll need to install NodeJS (version >=10.14.1). If you are unfamiliar with the technique, use the command listed below. (This is only for Linux users.)

sudo apt-get install nodejs

First of all, you need to check the Node version:

node -v

Then, review the NPM version:

npm -v

If the version you installed is older than the one shown above, use the command below to upgrade to the most recent and stable version of the node.

sudo npm cache clean -f 

sudo npm install -g n

sudo n stable

Step 3: Install and run Node JS

Post-installation and running of NodeJS, you will have to install  Yarn (Yarn >=1.13.0 ). Run the following command for the installation of Yarn. (Applicable only for Linux OS). 

sudo npm install yarn -g

Now check the yarn version :

yarn -v

Step 4: 

Now that Yarn is installed, clone the PWA repository to your development directory. 

git clone: https://github.com/magento-research/pwa-studio.git 

Step 5:

Consecutive to this step,  install the project dependencies by running the following command. 

yarn install 

Step 6: Create the .env file

For creating the .env file, run the ensuing command from the PWA root directory-

(For theme Venia you can use the Magento which is installed by you or the default Magento 2.3.1. Here we are using the default.)

MAGENTO_BACKEND_URL="https://master-7rqtwti-mfwmkrjfqvbjk.us-4.magentosite.cloud/" yarn buildpack create-env-file packages/venia-concept

You can also create the .env file and set your custom MAGENTO_BACKEND_URL value by using the following command:

MAGENTO_BACKEND_URL="https://YOUR_MAGENTO_BACKEND_URL/" yarn buildpack create-env-file packages/venia-concept

Step 7: Install the SSL certificate

Install the SSL certificate as PWA runs on a secure path, You can run the create-custom-origin command for generating the SSL certificate: 

yarn buildpack create-custom-origin packages/venia-concept 

Step 8: Install Venia Sample data

You can also install Venia Sample data, there is a bash script already available at

packages/venia-concept/deployVeniaSampleData.sh

bash deployVeniaSampleData.sh

To install sample data in Magento, run the following commands:

bin/magento setup:upgrade

bin/magento indexer:reindex 

Build all the artifacts for your theme now by running- 

yarn run build

Start the server by running any of the following commands as per your need, from your PWA project’s root directory. 

In terms of development-

yarn run watch:venia

With the aim of running full developer PWA Studio

yarn run watch:all

For building artifacts and running PWA studio to staging-

yarn run build && yarn run stage:venia

PWA has now been successfully installed. When you run the above-mentioned commands, you will see the URL where the PWA is operating. Then it will indicate whether the installation was successful or no

Conclusion

We walk you through this article with the hope that: you have an overview of Magento PWA studio. With lots of stunning features, it is definitely worth jumping into to increase your online store. Therefore, your business can meet the demand of customers and brings more opportunities to develop in the internet environment. However, if you are still confused about this technology, Magesolution is willing to be a partner to assist your business. With many experiences in this field, we are confident to provide the best service: Magento Progressive Web Application Development. Therefore, if you have any questions, contact us to have more information.