What is Progressive Web Apps or Magento is becoming a Progressive Web Application platform?

[Patel_Chirag]

I would like to know more about PWAs below are the questionnaire point.

1. What is PWA studio and how it's similar with progressive web application ?
2. Is magento invented PWAs?
3. Possible areas will affect by PWAs and code structure of PWAs?
4. Advantage & disadvantage of PWAs.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

[aditya_shah · Accepted solution]

What is Progressive Web Apps ?

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• Looks and behaves like a mobile app.
• Take advantage of native mobile device features, without requiring the end user to visit an app store, make a purchase and download it locally.

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Why PWA?

• Fast
• Secure (second last topic of answer)
• Responsive
• Cross-browser compatible
• Offline Mode (Check the last topic in the answer)
• Mobile “Install”
• Shareable content

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This answer also covers - Installation of Magento 2.3 with PWA

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Let's take an example of Flipkart

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce site, decided to combine their web presence and native app into a Progressive Web Application that has resulted in a 70% increase in conversions

Flipkart

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Approach

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1. Developed Flipkart Lite, a Progressive Web App
2. Added service workers for quicker load times
3. Smooth navigation and scrolling at 60 frames/second
4. Created an “Add to Home Screen” prompt to encourage users to add the mobile web-page to their home screens

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Results

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New Progressive Web App helps Flipkart boost conversions 70%

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Flipkart also works on Offline mode

• Service Workers can be scripted to intercept every network request and serve a response from cache even when the user is offline.
• Service Workers wrapper library that enables using simple patterns such as NetworkFirst, CacheFirst or NetworkOnly. SW-Toolbox provides an LRU cache used in Flipkart app for storing previous search results on the browse page and last few visited product pages.
• The toolbox also has TTL-based cache invalidation mechanism that we use to purge out of date content. Service Workers provide low-level scriptable primitives that make this possible.

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BUT... BUT... BUT...

What is the Magento PWA Studio?

• • The Magento PWA Studio project is a set of developer tools that allow for the development, deployment, and maintenance of a PWA storefront on top of Magento 2

The Magento PWA Studio project provides the following tools:

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pwa-module

• Its have modules like helpers, server-side functionality and acts as a foundation for all themes created using Magento PWA Studio.

pwa-buildpack -

• Buildpack is a set of Webpack plugins and tools which is used for development of Magento PWA themes.

• It is also used to setup and configure local development environment for Magento 2 platform.

It contains the following tools:

• PWADevServer
• Magento Resolver
• Magento Root Components Plugin
• magento-layout-loader
• Service Worker Plugin

Peregrine - Peregrine is a set of React components created to handle Magento-specific functionalities like routing, root-components, layout handler, product lists, price display, etc.

Venia theme - venia-concept is a demo theme created by Magento using the Magento PWA studio. It showcases all currently available functionality, workflow and pages

PWA Studio is NOT

• A New release of Magento

• A Replacement of all front-end

• A Desktop Application

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Tools & Libraries used in PWA Studios

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Webpack

• Webpack’s primary function is to create one or more bundles from the dependencies in your project’s modules.

App Shell

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• Total size is smaller
• Initial load requests three files: login.html, shell-1234.js, 3456.js
• Initial load needs to load: Shell + Router + content
• The shell is visible earlier than with Page Shell approach.

Page Shell

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• Total size is bigger (i. e. dashboard content is in dashboard-1234.js and 4567.js)

• App takes longer to be offline ready.

• Initial load requests only two files: login.html, login-2345.js

• Initial load needs to load: Shell + content

• The shell + content is visible earlier than with App Shell approach.

A hybrid approach can be used where shell and content is separated in two requests (see admin page as example). This makes sense when content is much bigger than shell and shell should be visible earlier.

ReactJs

• A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

Redux

• A JavaScript library used for managing state in a web application. 

GraphQL

• A data query language on the client side and a service layer on the server side.

GraphQL in Magento

Authentication and Schema

Reducing amount of Front-end Queries

Phase Render

Desktop Browser compatibility

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• Not supported: IE, Safari

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Mobile Browser compatibility

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Not supported: Android Webview, IE, Safari

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PWAs are More Secure

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• As a web developer, you may know how much Google encourages websites having httpsinstead of HTTP. Cyber threats are always top of the list for web and app developers.
• In the past, HTTP was not secure enough to protect users’ information.
• Websites are now being programmed in HTTPs and it is easy to launch a Progressive Web App in a secure environment.
• While entering personal information in PWA such as credit card information or contact details, they may feel secure and have peace of mind.

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PWA - Offline Mode

offline Wikipedia application is a good example of a PWA that uses an app shell model.

• It loads instantly on repeat visits, but dynamically fetches content using JS.
• This content is then cached offline for future visits.

Progressive Web App is the future of web development without any doubt. In the future, e-commerce sites, restaurants, and media sources will transition from native app to Progressive Web App. However, still in the initial phase, many of the developers would be actively looking for ways to make most out of the opportunities given by PWAs.

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Lets start with Magento 2.3 installation with PWA

1. Enter the following command in DIR /var/www/html/ (m203 is my Magento 2.3 directory):

composer create-project --repository=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition=2.3.* --stability=beta m203

2. Install Magento by Command Line:

bin/magento setup:install --base-url=http://localhost/m230 --db-host=localhost --db-name=m230 --db-user=root --db-password=root --backend-frontname=admin --admin-firstname=admin --admin-lastname=admin --admin-email=admin@admin.com --admin-user=admin --admin-paassword=admin123 --language=en_US --currency=USD --timezone=America/Chicago --use-rewrites=1

3. Create base pwa theme which will be the parent them for PWA Venia theme.

• For now lets clone base pwa theme repository.

4. Create directory app/design/frontend/Magento/pwa and copy all files and directories of base theme here.

• Lets check base theme is available or not.

• Run: php bin/magento setup:upgrade

• And navigate to your Magento Admin->Content->Themes 

5. Download PWA studio project.

6. Navigate to your Magento installation’s root directory and create a Pwa symlink folder linking to the project’s module directory(pwa-studio/packages/pwa-module).

• from this directory i ran my command - /var/www/html/m230

• This is a directory where my pwa downloaded source is /var/www/html/PWA/

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ln -s /var/www/html/PWA/pwa-studio-master/packages/pwa-module app/code/Magento/Pwa

7. Link theme directory as well.Navigate to your Magento installation’s root directory and create a Pwa symlink folder linking to the project’s module directory(pwa-studio/packages/venia-concept).

ln -s /var/www/html/PWA/pwa-studio-master/packages/venia-concept app/design/frontend/Magento/venia

8. Now navigate to your pwa-studio project’s venia-concept directory, copy .env.dist into a new .env file and update the variables with the URL to your Magento development store.

cd /var/www/html/PWA/pwa-studio-master/packages/venia-conceptcp .env.dist .env

9. Install venia theme and Pwa Module:

run: php bin/magento setup:upgrade

we can see the venia theme is installed successfully.

10. Configure venia theme from admin->Content->Configuration

11. Navigate to path (/var/www/html/PWA/pwa-studio-master) run:

npm install

or

npm install webpack-dev-server -g

12. And Finally Navigate to /var/www/html/PWA/pwa-studio-master/packages/venia-concept

npm start

Congratulations! You have set up your development environment for the Venia theme project.

[Patel_Chirag]

@aditya_shah 

What a fabulous R&D and explanation about magento PWAs.

I have a some question related to your replay.

Who is invented native PWA? google invented native PWA?

And in magento PWA studio use native PWA?

What are will affect after PWAs in magento?

Thanks! 

[christopher_daniel]

@Patel_Chirag 

first native PWA - This is the first time I heard this. 

To my knowledge only PWA is available and Im not aware of sub sections.

Google coined PWA and PWA studio helps to build PWA storefront for magento. 

Note: Magento builds PWA studio in collaboration with Google.

PWA's gives App like experience for mobile users but the developer still build a website.

PWA  magento would be faster than theme based magento, PWA will be need API's to communicate to magento. All customisation need to have API support either REST or Graphql.

If you still have doubts please refer https://magento-research.github.io/pwa-studio/