Rapidez v2

Time for an update! 🎉 The last blog is from September 2022. 👀 So, where are we now? Well... a lot happened! 🚀 We gave this website a refresh for example!

Rapidez v1

From the September 2023 newsletter:

So what's the deal with the versions? Well, we initially started Rapidez as a proof of concept, which eventually evolved into a beta product. As we wanted to include some lower-priority features in version 1, we found ourselves stuck at the 0.x stage. However, it's essential to note that 0.x is not a beta product; we fully support it, and it's a finalized product!

Pretty quickly after the newsletter on October 19, 2023, we finally tagged version 1. 🚀 We left the "lower-priority features" and moved forward. Some of those features can be found between the rapidez/rapidez issues and we'll work on those when a users needs them.

What changed in Rapidez v1?

A lot! We migrated many Vue/Javascript stuff to VueUse, improved the frontend, added cool new features like categories in the autocomplete, and implemented several other breaking changes. As mentioned in the latest newsletter from March 2024, the full v1 changelog can be found on Github.

February 21, 2024 👉 2️⃣ well that's pretty fast? Yeah, in comparison with the first Rapidez commit on February 28, 2020 and the release of Rapidez v1 that took 3,5 years. 👀 But why?

GraphQL cart

The GraphQL support in Magento developed significantly. With Rapidez 0.x we tried to use GraphQL for the cart, but not everything was implemented yet. Four years later, it's more solid but still lacks some features. For example, receiving the qty_increments attribute is not possible and product option file uploads are not working when adding a product into your cart through GraphQL. However, in this release, we have successfully migrated these cart functionalities from the Magento API to GraphQL! Rapidez v2 changelog on Github 🚀

Magento Rapidez Compadre

So we can't upload files anymore with product options? And quantity increments are not working anymore? It's possible to get this working with a Magento module: rapidez/magento2-compadre. We tried to keep this off for as long as possible, but staying on the Magento API isn't the best choice and migrating to GraphQL and not implementing some Magento core feature (which some Rapidez projects are already using) isn't an option. You should only install the Magento module if you would like to use these specific features. Hopefully, we can deprecate this module someday when everything is out-of-the-box possible with Magento.

Magento modules support

One of the first questions we get when people start with Rapidez is; "Is Magento module x compatible?" and the answer is; likely not. Which might feel like a big downside of Rapidez, but it shouldn't.

Magento can be extended with modules (and over the years, many have been developed), but are you always happy with them? Can something be achieved easier or better in another architecture? If they're paid, do you feel it's worth it? Modules purely for the Magento backend do work, but when involving the frontend it needs some Rapidez compatibility. And yes, we have some. Have a look at the packages overview. But when you do have the complete freedom, how would you like it?

For example, we made some blog, FAQ, menu and form packages compatible but are those the best on the market? Are you really happy with them? If so, use them. We say Rapidez is "Headless Magento" so you could integrate other platforms... outside the "Magento scope". What you could do is integrate a CMS like Statamic (or any other modern CMS). Just create some collections for pages, blogs, etc., anything you'd like and you don't need all those Magento modules and likely have a better experience. We do offer a Statamic integration with some really useful features like Magento products and categories integrated within Statamic so you can link things, an easily extendable page builder, responsive images, etc.

Not sure how to deal with this? Contact us and we're happy to think with you.

New Rapidez packages

Since the last blog, we created some new packages like a Multiple Wishlists, Multisafepay, Openreplay, Postcodeservice, etc. Have a look at the package overview in the docs or on Github for all Rapidez repositories for all packages. With everything mentioned earlier our goal isn't to be compatible with every Magento module.

Checkout theme + Confira

Two notable new packages are the Rapidez Checkout Theme and Confira. We created these packages as an opinionated checkout with customer account center. The checkout within the Rapidez Core is a kind of copy of what Magento offers, but headless and without much styling. The same goes for the Rapidez Account package, which comes installed with Rapidez by default. The styling is very basic so you can build up from there to however you like it.

With the Checkout Theme we're giving a more complete and styled option (but still configurable and extendable) with focus on B2B customers. Confira is built on top of the Checkout Theme for B2C shops. We think these new packages are very helpful if you want a good checkout without much work on styling.

Rapidez Showcases and Roadmap

Some very cool new projects went live, check out the showcases! Currently we're working on the checkout migration from the Magento API to GraphQL. As this will involve breaking changes, we hope to tag Rapidez v3 soon! As mentioned in the latest newsletter, the next things we're going to work on are:

Price component + Tierpricing: One of our partners made two different tierprice implementations, we'd like to merge that together into the core.
Index refactor: Laravel has some new features, like batches, that we would like to integrate.
Reactivesearch alternative: It works, but to support more engines and integrations, we're going to investigate migrating to the Instantsearch and autocomplete libraries from Algolia.
Vue 3 or Alpine + Turbo partials: Vue 2 is EOL, so we need to migrate away. This goes hand in hand with exploring the Reactivesearch alternative. We might move from Vue to Alpine; otherwise, we'll upgrade to Vue 3.
Shared account login state: Currently, only Magento knows if a customer is logged in; we could share the token in a cookie so that even the Rapidez PHP side knows the state, which we can use to improve the logged-in experience.
Flat table dependency: Migrate away from it; we're already moving towards a more relation-based model system instead of joining everything together.

Newsletters

Since the previous blog of Rapidez, we have sent three newsletters. Did you miss one? Not subscribed? Drop your email address on the homepage and stay tuned 😎

Demo and Mage-OS

We still need to update the Rapidez Demo as it's really, really old. Oh 👀 and did we already mention we're listed on the Mage OS website? We're on the Magento Front End Options page 🚀