The document discusses headless architecture and implementing it for Magento. It describes taking business logic and data out of Magento and exposing it via APIs that can then be consumed by various clients like Magento and other systems. This allows isolating domains and insulating systems from future changes. It recommends using lightweight PHP frameworks and standard libraries to build the APIs and services, and addresses issues like data storage, caching, and output formatting.

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Sander Mangel
Headless Magento

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• Magento developer
• Lead @ FitForMe
• Co-organiser MMNL,
Unconf, MageStackDay,
Meetups
• Avid community member
twitter.com/sandermangel
linkedin.com/in/sandermangel
github.com/sandermangel

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What is headless architecture
"Headless architecture means an application offering APIs that abstract away business logic
for a multitude of clients to consistently and repeatedly execute the same tasks."

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Read more
http://bit.ly/2qo6XBc
http://bit.ly/1Wku9c0
http://bit.ly/2rtVIas
http://bit.ly/2qrkQKP
http://bit.ly/2hyM6Dy

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Putting it into practice

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?

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Common integrations
● ERP
● Fulfillment
● Logs
● Email server
● ….

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Clients
● Magento backend
● Magento frontend
● Legacy system
● Dashboards
● Magento 2?

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So we take a different
approach
• Magento will be a client &
provide data
• Implement a basic data
warehouse
• Which is fed by, and queried
by various services separated
by domains
• Isolate data & business logic
per domain
That allows for a smooth integration

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Leverage middleware for a
stable environment
storage
source consumer server

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Leverage middleware for a
stable environment
storage
source consumer server
● Normalize & combine data
● Offer stable APIs for clients
● Insulate from future changes

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Incoming data

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Build on standardised libraries
● There is a solution for everything
already out there
● Use popular libraries, preferably
adhering to a PSR protocol
● Don't overcomplicate dependency
injection
● Think carefully about what you need
and spend time finding the best
option
[...]
"require": {
"php": ">=7.0",
"slim/slim": "^3.1",
"monolog/monolog": "^1.17",
"cache/filesystem-adapter": "^0.4.0",
"guzzlehttp/guzzle": "^6.2",
"cache/array-adapter": "^0.5.0",
"illuminate/database": "^5.4",
"yadakhov/insert-on-duplicate-key": "^1.1",
"symfony/console": "^3.3",
"league/oauth1-client": "^1.7"
}
[...]

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Build on standardised libraries
● slimphp - Routing, DI
● monolog - gives insight in what the service does
for monitoring and debugging
● cache/… - stores certain API calls, temporary data
● guzzle - offers a way to consume APIs over http
● illuminate/database - Laravel ORM (personal
preference)
● Insert-on-duplicate.... - not a default option in
illuminate/database but a must for me
● symfony/console - for cronjobs and commandline
tasks
● league/oauth1-client - offers built in Magento 1
REST integration
[...]
"require": {
"php": ">=7.0",
"slim/slim": "^3.1",
"monolog/monolog": "^1.17",
"cache/filesystem-adapter": "^0.4.0",
"guzzlehttp/guzzle": "^6.2",
"cache/array-adapter": "^0.5.0",
"illuminate/database": "^5.4",
"yadakhov/insert-on-duplicate-key": "^1.1",
"symfony/console": "^3.3",
"league/oauth1-client": "^1.7"
}
[...]

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Build on standardised libraries
● SlimPHP project as basis
● One module in src some basic
setup files needed by SlimPHP
● Keep it simple and self-contained

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Some learnings
● Single purpose
● It should feel overly simple
● Within the service, separate tasks
● Document, document, document
● Write integration tests for the API
endpoints
● Log everything

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Exposing data

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Exposing data
● Read only
● Easy to integrate
● Offer sorting, filtering, and a host of
other query options
● Be very fast (d'oh)
● Standardized & easily scalable

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Standardizing?
● Output format and syntax
● Filtering and sorting
● Caching

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Enabling various integrations
protected function _prepareCollection()
{
[...]
try {
$client = new Client();
$res = $client->request('GET', $helper->getBaseUrl(0) . 'quarantine?'.
http_build_query([ 'limit' => $limit, 'page' => $page, 'sort' => $columnId, 'sortdir'
=> $dir, 'filters' => (array)$filter, '', '&'));
} catch (Exception $error) {
Mage::logException($error);
$this->setCollection($collection); // set a dummy empty collection
return $this;
}
$data = json_decode($res->getBody(), true);
$lastPage = $data['to'];
array_walk($data['data'], function($order) use (&$collection) {
$collection->addItem(
new Varien_Object(
[ 'shipping_date' => $order['shipping_date'],
'order_reference' => $order['order_reference'],
'customer_reference' => $order['customer_reference'],
'updated_at' => $order['updated_at'],
'shipping_fullname' => "{$order['shipping_firstname']}
{$order['shipping_middlename']} {$order['shipping_lastname']}",
]
)
);
});
$collection->setCurPage($page);
$collection->setLastPageNumber($lastPage);
$collection->setSize($lastPage * $limit);
$this->setCollection($collection);
● Magento 1 grids
● Ajax calls for smaller values
● Data imports
● Communication between services
● ...

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Caching
● How dynamic is dynamic content
● Cache is all about control
● Think of a strategy upfront

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Caching
● How dynamic is dynamic content
● Cache is all about control
● Think of a strategy upfront
https://github.com/magespecialist/m2-M
SP_APIEnhancer
Magento 2 API enhancer

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Wish list & ideas

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Database
● MariaDB
○ Relational
○ Easy to work with
○ Offers good performance up to 1TB
data
● Elastic
○ REST output
○ Plug and play
○ Advanced search

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Monolithic
● Dedicated / VPS server
○ Offered by all hosting
companies
○ Easy to maintain
○ Does not scale easily
○ If one goes down...
Distributed
● Instances on a cloud
○ Scales easily
○ Environments are isolated
○ Requires more knowledge
○ Can be harder to
administrate

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API gateway
● Allow for easy service discovery
● Handle authentication, call rate limiting
● Routing
- http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html
- https://www.nginx.com/blog/building-microservic
es-using-an-api-gateway/

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API gateway
● Allow for easy service discovery
● Handle authentication, call rate limiting
● Routing
- http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html
- https://www.nginx.com/blog/building-microservic
es-using-an-api-gateway/

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Output format
There are great solution for better
documenting, discovery and output
formatting.
However, standardising output across
a large set of APIs has it's pitfalls as
no implementation is ever perfect

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Summary
● By offloading tasks from Magento we keep
it fast and lightweight
● Storing data in a central place and making
it available via REST apis makes for easy
integration
● Headless can start by adding some of
those APIs to the existing back- or frontend
● Using lightweight php frameworks with
limited features makes for easy to develop
and fast applications

36. Code: https://github.com/sandermangel/headless-middleware
twitter.com/sandermangel
github.com/sandermangel
Integrating a ReactJS frontend in Magento 2
- Riccardo Tempesta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElZ5UtTXpzQ