Magento Progressive Web App (PWA) Setup Using Magento PWA Studio

Building a high-performing, modern eCommerce shop involves more than just a robust backend; it also necessitates seamless integration and ongoing support.  Magento PWA Studio enables developers to create Progressive Web Apps that are fast, responsive, and mobile-friendly, providing a user experience similar to native applications.  To effectively utilize these features, businesses frequently rely on Magento support and maintenance services to ensure stability and continual improvement.  Furthermore, a strong Magento API integration is crucial for connecting third-party services and improving functionality, making your storefront truly dynamic and future-ready.

Here are some popular topics to help you get started:

PWA Studio Overview – A high-level overview of PWA Studio and what it provides to developers

What is a Progressive Web App

A Progressive Web App, or PWA, is a term for any web application that uses modern web technologies and design patterns to provide a reliable, fast, and engaging user experience.

The following features define a basic PWA website:

• Fast – PWA sites use a variety of performance optimization strategies to provide a responsive experience or load content fast, even on slow networks. 
• Secure – PWA sites use HTTPS connections for enhanced security. 
• Responsive – PWA sites implement responsive design strategies to provide a consistent experience on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. 
• Cross-browser compatible – PWA sites work equally well on all modern browsers, such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. 
• Offline Mode – PWA sites cache content to ensure that some content can be served when a user is offline. 
• Mobile “Install” – Mobile users can add PWA sites to their home screens and even receive Push notifications from the site.
• Shareable content – Each page in a PWA site has a unique URL that can be shared with other apps or social media.

The RAIL model lays out the user-centric goals for PWA websites:

• Response – An application is receptive to the user’s request. 
• Animation – It shows a movement to keep the user from pausing. 
• Idle – A PWA utilizes the “idle” second to cache content.
• Load – It loads under a moment.

What is the PWA Studio project?

The PWA Studio project is a set of developer tools and libraries that let you develop, deploy, and maintain a PWA storefront on top of an Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source backend. It uses modern tools and libraries to create a build system and framework that adheres to the principles of extensibility

Build tools 

The pwa-buildpack package contains the main build and development tools for your PWA Studio project. It provides features such as project setup tools, configuration management, and an extensibility framework. 

When you use the CLI tool in this package to set up a new storefront project, it bundles and incorporates these tools into your new project to help you get started.

Custom React hooks and components 

The venia-ui and peregrine packages contain custom React hooks and components for your PWA Studio project. 

The venia-ui package provides React components that render the HTML structure of UI components in your storefront. It uses components from the peregrine package, which provide components that manage state, calculate values, and fetch data from the backend. 

These packages work together to provide features for your storefront project, but you can also pick and choose which components you need for your customizations.

Demo storefront and backend

The venia-concept package provides a template for a PWA Studio storefront project. When you set up a new storefront project, you get a copy of the content in this package, which is a fully operational storefront you can customize.

The PWA Studio team also provides a shared Adobe Commerce instance to all PWA Studio developers to help you get started with development. The team updates and maintains this instance to ensure you are developing on the latest Adobe Commerce version. This server also contains sample data for a fashion store to show the different features available from PWA Studio libraries.

Tools and libraries – A list of tools and libraries developers need to be familiar with to use PWA Studio.

PHP

PHP is the core language used in the Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source application, but it is not one used by the main PWA Studio project. In general, you do not need to know PHP to work with PWA Studio tools, but if your storefront requires heavy customizations to the backend application, you will need to know PHP to make the necessary changes.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language used to add logic and interactive behaviors to web applications. JavaScript is the primary language used in the PWA Studio project, and knowing how to develop with it is necessary for using PWA Studio in your projects. 

For frontend development, browser compatibility is important for creating a consistent experience. Different web browsers have different versions of JavaScript installed, so developers should build their applications with this in mind. 

For backend developers, scripts and services in PWA Studio are created using Node.js. It is the environment used in the PWA Studio project, but it is not a required one for your projects.

webpack

Webpack is a configuration-driven asset bundler and optimizer for JavaScript applications. 

Webpack’s primary function is to create one or more bundles from the dependencies in your project’s modules. Webpack is also able to transform, package, or optimize resources and assets using plugins. This allows you to extend webpack’s functionality beyond JavaScript bundling. 

The pwa-buildpack library contains webpack tools for setting up a development or production environment. The configuration for these tools is found in a project’s webpack. config.js file. 

Webpack is not a required library for your projects, but it is recommended for the development and performance benefits it provides.

React

React officially describes itself as a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. The library provides the following features that make PWA development easier:

Simple – The React library does one thing: build a user interface. It does this without making assumptions about the underlying technology stack. This flexibility gives you the freedom to choose the appropriate solutions for the rest of your project.

Declarative – Creating a complex user interface is difficult when working directly with the DOM API. React allows you to describe how your interface should look for a specific application state, and the library takes care of rendering the UI correctly when the state changes.

Modular – React encourages developers to create modular and reusable components. Taking a modular approach to development makes your code easier to debug and maintain.

Hooks

React hooks are a feature introduced in React 16.8. They allow the use of state and logic encapsulation without using class components. 

 Since hooks allow you to store state inside functional components, they are a good alternative to using Redux. 

 The Peregrine library provides custom hooks for common storefront behaviors and logic. Developers must be familiar with using hooks to get the most out of the PWA Studio library.

Redux

Redux is a JavaScript library used for managing state in a web application. 

 It provides a global store object that holds application state that multiple components depend on. Components that plug into the store have direct access to the specific state data they need. 

 This library is often paired with React to alleviate the problem of passing data down multiple component layers. 

Redux is currently being refactored out of the Venia example storefront in favor of React hooks. However, Redux is still a valid library for managing state in your projects.

GraphQL

GraphQL is a specification for a data query language on the client side and a service layer on the server side. It is often seen as an alternative to using REST endpoints. 

One of the main advantages GraphQL has over REST is that a single GraphQL endpoint can accommodate requests for any combination of X, Y, and Z pieces of data, whereas REST requires specialized endpoints for different data request combinations. Unlike REST, which can require multiple server requests to aggregate data, a single GraphQL request returns only the data needed and nothing more. 

Performance is an important metric for PWAs. Using GraphQL improves this by reducing the number of server calls and the amount of data returned. 

The Venia example storefront uses the Apollo client to fetch data from a GraphQL endpoint, but with a little extra work, it is possible to use alternative client libraries in your project.

Workbox 

Google’s Workbox library provides modules that make it easy to work with service workers. It is useful for boosting performance by controlling cache behavior and enabling offline mode, which is a requirement for any Progressive Web Application.

PWA Studio UI Kit for Adobe XD

Adobe XD makes handoff between designers and engineers more efficient through easy-to-use collaboration tools. The PWA Studio UI Kit contains a collection of templates and components compatible with Adobe Commerce.

PWA Studio fundamentals – A series of tutorials covering common storefront development tasks

Set up a storefront project

This tutorial provides the first steps for working with PWA Studio by teaching you how to set up a new storefront project. You will create a PWA Studio storefront project based on the Venia concept storefront and configure it based on your environment. To see a demo of the Venia concept storefront, visit venia.magento.com.

Run the scaffolding tool

In your terminal, navigate to the directory where you want to install your storefront project and run the scaffolding tool. 
Scaffolding tool commands 
yarn create @magento/pwa 
npm init @magento/pwa 
npx @magento/create-pwa

Add a custom hostname and SSL cert

The scaffolding tool sets up a working React development environment, but this environment is not yet ideal for developing PWA storefronts. 

PWA features, such as service workers and push notifications, require HTTPS secure domains, so your development environment must serve content over HTTPS to match a production environment. 

If you are working on more than one storefront project, each project must have a custom hostname to prevent clashing with service workers or ports. Fortunately, PWA Studio provides an easy method of creating a custom domain and SSL certificate for your local development environment. 

Use the create-custom-origin sub-command from the buildpack CLI to create a custom hostname and SSL cert: 

yarn buildpack create-custom-origin ./

Start the development server 

Use the following command to start the development server: 

yarn watch

Update environment variables (optional)

This step is optional because the scaffolding command already adds the required environment variables to the environment file. 

If you want to change environment variables, such as MAGENTO_BACKEND_URL or BRAINTREE_TOKEN, update your project’s .env file and change the property values.

Best Practices for PWA Studio 

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when working with PWA Studio. 

Dynamic Content

Using dynamic content can be challenging due to shifting layouts. It is helpful to end users if the page layout is established as early as possible. Dynamic content can lead to page flow issues. 

• Use sizing as often as possible. If blocks have defined heights and widths, the layout engine can reserve those spaces faster. Use shimmers to enable block-out image areas. 
• Load layout CSS styles before the content arrives. However, excessive styles that are not initially needed can slow down processing. 

• Think through what kind of dynamic content you want to expose and how you are going to expose it. The more code that can be delivered statically, the better. 

• If possible, place dynamic content on an area of the page that is not initially visible. This will give the layout a chance to stabilize before the customer gets to that content.

CSS 

• Use CSS modules to separate and package your custom styles. This allows you to: 
• Create and manage component-specific styles 
• Avoid global naming collisions 
• Use class composition 

Custom modules 

The PWA Studio extensibility framework should be used to customize the default Venia storefront. 

• Separate code into modules with limited capabilities. Smaller, more numerous modules are easier to manage than one large module. 
• Each module should have a clear, consistent set of interfaces. 
• Use targets to intercept and modify code from an extension. 

GraphQL 

• Always name your queries. This not only makes it easier for others to figure out, but it makes the query available to Apollo caching. 

 Key Benefits: 

• Faster page loads with client-side rendering
• App-like UX (offline access, home screen shortcut, push notifications)
• Better SEO and performance (Lighthouse-optimized)
• Built with React, Redux, and GraphQL

Prerequisites 

• Magento 2.4.x installed 
• Node.js ≥ 16.x and npm ≥ 7.x 
• Yarn (optional but recommended) 
• Docker (if you want to containerize) 
• Linux, macOS, or WSL2 (for Windows)