Release: 3.5 & 2.30

A new Quick Order Page, Dynamic Routing, and Server-side Tracking

This double release brings several requested features to Front-Commerce. The most notable ones are the quick order page which allows customers to order products in bulk seamlessly, and different ways to switch to server-side tracking to cope with the decline of 3rd-party cookies.

On a more technical side, we are happy to introduce one of the last missing feature from 2.x in Front-Commerce 3.5: dynamic routing. Built on top of the Remix/React-Router routes API, Front-Commerce dynamic routing allows you to implement any URL structure you want without sacrificing performance or features.
It is unique in the Remix ecosystem, and solves several limitations that were present in the previous versions of Front-Commerce. We are excited to see what you will build with it!

As usual, these releases also include several bug fixes and improvements to the product. Let's dive in and explore what's new in Front-Commerce 3.5.

Quick Order Page

The Quick Order Page is a new feature that allows customers to order products in bulk. It is particularly useful for B2B customers who know the product codes and quantities they need for restocking.

While the quick order page allows to manually enter product codes and quantities, it also supports CSV import. Customers can download a CSV template, fill it with product references and quantities, and upload it to fill the form automatically. After validation, customers can add all products to their cart in one click.

Feature active by default

This page will be active by default at /quick-order after updating your project (either to 3.5+ or 2.30+). If you want to opt-out of this feature, you will have to remove the route from your project as documented in the migration guide for your specific version.

Server-side tracking

With the decline of 3rd-party cookies, it is essential to have a server-side tracking solution to keep track of your customers' behavior and understand their needs.

Today's Front-Commerce releases introduce different options for your projects:

• 2.x (and 3.x) projects can leverage tools such as Server-side Tag Manager or commercial solutions such as Addingwell to send tracking events to 3rd-party services from a server-side context hosted on a subdomain. We updated our documentation to explain how to set up these tools with Front-Commerce's existing analytics stack.
• 3.5+ projects can additionally benefit from Server-Side events to use our new server-side tracking solution that is fully integrated with Front-Commerce and server-side Analytics plugins. We've added support for Google Analytics Measurement Protocol commerce events, and are looking for feedbacks to improve and extend this feature.

Learn more

For more context on server-side tracking, you can read our recent editorial content on the subject:

• Understanding Server-Side Tracking
• Exploring Server-Side Tracking and Server-Sent Events
• Client-side Tracking vs. Server-side Tracking: Navigating The Challenges and Solutions
• Exploring Server-Side Tracking with Front-Commerce
• Understanding Server-Side Tracking for Enhanced Data Collection

Dynamic Routing in Front-Commerce 3.5

Front-Commerce 3.5 introduces dynamic routing, a feature that brings more flexibility than ever to your Remix application. It allows you to customize your URL structure dynamically based on your data, without sacrificing performance or features.

This feature is unique in the Remix ecosystem and closes the gap with the 2.x versions of Front-Commerce. We took the time to build it right, and we are looking forward to seeing how we can refine or improve the feature with your feedback.

Here is a quick overview of what you can do with dynamic routing:

• Maintain the benefits from route based data fetching, code splitting and mental model from Remix
• Support advanced URL structures matching. Example: /category-:slug-:id, /latest-:brand/seo-keyword-:filter.html, …
• Generate URLs based on identifiers contributed across different backends such as an E-Commerce platform, CMS service, …
• Have top-level URL segments that can render different routes based on the path. Example: /my-product can render a product route while /my-category or /my-page can render different routes
• Optimize the URL matching algorithm for performance by customizing URL matchers execution plan based on your own context. Example: run fast matchers in parallel, and slower ones in a second batch if needed
• Implement a redirection plan from your CMS. Example: redirect old URLs to new ones when the title is updated
• Implement localized URLs for your routes. Example: /contact-us in English and /contactez-nous in French
• A simplified URL matchers API, that is only responsible for converting URLs to route parameters

We built dynamic routing to solve concrete use cases and challenges from advanced e-commerce projects. Please let us know any limitations you encounter and how we can improve the feature.

Dynamic routing is built on top of the Route API from Remix. It can be adopted progressively in your project. We have updated our default routes and extensions to use dynamic route features when relevant … as you would expect!

Learn more

Learn more about dynamic routing in our dedicated documentation guide: Dynamic Routing in Front-Commerce.

Front-Commerce files are now supported in VSCode Icons

On a lighter note, we are happy to announce that Front-Commerce icons are now available for FC 2.x and 3.x configuration files in the latest release of the VSCode Icons extension. Thanks Paul!

If you're using VSCode, we recommend you to install this extension (using ext install vscode-icons in the command palette) and you'll see the Front-Commerce logo on configuration files or reserved directories 🎉

Other changes

We also made several changes in these releases, to improve existing features and fix bugs.

Features

• 2.x only:
  • stripe: Enable IPN-based payments for Magento2 (scheduled for 3.6)
  • server: add support for an onServerInit callback for server modules (with an example using it to implement a websocket server)
• images: Initial release of the @front-commerce/twicpics package for FC 3.x, allowing to use TwicPics as a CDN for image assets.
• theme-chocolatine: the Skeleton now accepts a component as prop
• magento: added oAuth tokens to the shared configuration provider
• core:
  • Implement custom session storage for UserJourney
  • Implement a unique visitor id for a journey
  • Implement configuration file for maintenance mode
  • Replaced usages of process.env.* through standard configProviders
• analytics:
  • Implement Add To Wishlist event tracking
  • Implement Register event tracking
• dx:
  • Add typed commerce events for analytics
  • Allow HMR reconnection after server disconnect

Bug Fixes

These bug fixes were also backported to 2.x when relevant.

• magento1: prevent categories batch to fail if one doesn't exist by using a batch API call

• theme-chocolatine:

  • fixes add to wishlist after initial login
  • fixed CMS route to support deep identifiers (e.g: /cms/foo/bar)
  • fixed meta tags definition for PLP and PDP
  • fixed the CountrySelect input for the compat form
  • fixed CMS page meta description value

• magento2:

  • restored MagentoWysiwyg specific fragments to ensure full widgets support.
  • added missing content types exports to magento2 package.
  • fixed import location for magento factories

• payments: removed guest cart tokens on async checkout success to prevent race conditions fetching a partially incorrect cart during async payments

• core:

  • append session cookies to headers even if Set-Cookie exists
  • fixed an issue where the RateLimiter service would fill up the connection pool in redis
  • fixed the frontCommerce context types in AppLoadContext by extending the @remix-run/node types.

• analytics:

  • fixed an issue where analytics plugins were not detected properly
  • Added mechanism to prevent Order Completed even to trigger multiple times
  • fixed the analytics trackPage event payload
  • fixed duplicate tracking for Search page

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Fixes from 3.5 and 2.30 have also been backported into previous minor versions. The following patch versions were released: 3.4.3, 3.3.4, 3.2.8, 3.1.7, 3.0.6, 2.29.2, 2.28.4, 2.27.6, 2.26.10, and 2.25.15.

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Upgrade Front-Commerce (Migration guides): 3.5.0, 2.30.0
Read the full changelog (Customers only): 3.5.0, 2.30.0.

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