The Promise
What if I told you, that you can transform your firebase project into a headless commerce cms for your online store or application ?
Meet shelf-cms.io
shelf turns your firebase resources into a headless commerce platform.
shelf is a CMS (Content Management System) essentially. Out of the box, it does this while utilizing the following resources, that are available to you
Firestore Database
Firestore is the leading no-SQL database offering by Google. Some of it's benefits
- Very generous free tier
- pay as you go pricing above the free tier
- Infinitely scalable as opposed to other common databases
shelf
manages your firestore to create the a fully functional commerce platform. It does so by managing the following collections:
-
/products
collection to store product information -
/collections
collection to store collections information -
/storefronts
collection to manage storefront data -
/tags
collection to manage laconic key value tags (helpful for filtering) -
/users
collection to manage users -
/discounts
collection to manage automatic and manual(coupons) discounts -
/orders
collection to manage orders with states and line items -
/shipping_methods
collection to manage shipping methods -
/images
collection to manage images -
/payment_gateways
collection to manage configurations of payment gateways -
/posts
collection to manage rich media -
/notifications
collection to manage admin notifications -
/settings
collection to manage admin notifications
Once, shelf
manages these collections for your project, you can use them in your app however you want at client side and backend side. But, we made things simpler for you, we developed an optional client side SDK and a sample backend to enable payments and checkouts from a website as well as emails.
Storage
Object Storage is a classic serverless object storage, where you can store images, files, jsons and any type of blob you can think of. shelf
leverages storage services
- To store images you upload and edit in the products page
- Save compressed exported collections with embedded products
- Save compressed exported storefronts
We support the following object storage services
Cloudflare R2 storage
yes, we support it
Amazon S3
yes, we support it
Any S3 compatible service
such as minIO
Firebase Google Storage
Of course, we also support Google storage
Firebase Authentication (identity)
shelf
uses firebase authorization to distinguish you as part of the admin users, that's it.
Firebase Functions
firebase functions is Google's leading serverless functions offering. shelf
does not require functions, but we recommend using them for the following use cases:
- Integrating payment API such as
PayPal standard checkout
orstripe
at your website - Sending Emails for events when a user onboards or when an order was confirmed or shipped.
Luckily, we have open sourced our very small and effective backend, that you can deploy in few clicks, and the best part, you can customize it to your own needs.
Why use SHELF
There are a few reasons why we created this platform, let's discuss it
Scalability
All of Firebase's products are scalable, infinitely or so scalable. As opposed, to the old paradigm were one would have to rent a single server, install a database on it and cross his fingers, that traffic will not overwhelm the server and the database.
So, amazingly enough, we are in the era of scalability, a thing that is hard to achieve with classic WordPress sites.
Cost
You really cannot get something better. Firebase has an amazing free tier and a pay as you go (usage based) price one you surpass it. shelf
was born to take advantage of this cost effectiveness.
You can operate a small store without ever surpassing the free tier of firebase.
Headless
Headless Commerce systems are the present and future. By decoupling the presentation layer, i.e front-end from your business logic, you enable a lot of things:
-
Scalability
- No longer does your backend system determines the vast performance of your frontend -
Originality
- No more do you have to deal with pre-made templates. Now you can craft your own original websites and unique experiences to delight your customers. -
Omnichannels
- Your backend can serve both mobile, web, desktop and IoT users
Customizable
You can customize and craft your own commerce behaviours at the backend. shelf
is aware to some parts of your backend (should you choose to use one).
Speed
A lot of commerce systems have the notion of a payment gateway, for example, where they try to capture all possible features of some payment API such as stripe
.
In reality, users only need to use one branch of these features, costing them in speed and bugs. We provide you a solid backbone, that you can take shape the features you need.
Our PayPal
integration is just a single file, easy to understand and change for your own needs, if changes are needed.
We do not maintain a plugin with 1000 issues at github covering all possible payment scenarios, it is an overkill. We instead, use minimalism as a guide to use only what we require.
Versatility
- You can use
shelf
to run your offline business, just to manage your inventory, customers and orders. - You can get started in minutes with
shelf
Toolings
The shelf
platform comes with some delights to make it easy to use at client and backend side.
-
shelf-client-js-sdk
- a very simple client side js sdk, that talks to firebase with it's lightweight REST API. It takes care of authentication, public resources like products, collections, storefronts etc.. -
shelf-client-react-hooks
- a React hook lib for shelf -
shelf-backend
- a base backend for shelf example. Easy to customize (only 160kb)
Top comments (0)