SAP Spartacus: A beginner’s guide to this next-gen ecommerce storefront

SAP Commerce Cloud has certainly made a huge impact on the ecommerce industry by offering a scalable, cloud-based, and advanced platform to run different functions easily. However, at the beginning, it was highly integrated with a rigid storefront library that prevented developers from extending library functions or enhancing the process agility. Apart from this, the previous storefront lacked several features one would expect from a modern-day storefront in the ecommerce industry.

To tackle these challenges, SAP released a new platform known as SAP Spartacus. It also goes by the name of Hybris Spartacus and helps developers build cutting-edge storefront for any ecommerce business. Considering that many are still unaware about the true potential of Spartacus, we have compiled a beginner’s guide here for better understanding.

What is SAP Spartacus?

SAP Spartacus is an angular-based, lean JavaScript storefront that is specifically developed for SAP Commerce Cloud. It exclusively communicates with the cloud platform using a set of Commerce Rest APIs for faster data fetching, query processing, and enhanced responsiveness. It has its own library functions that can be further exported as and when required, thereby implementing the concept of on-the-fly scalability.

Using the Spartacus library functions, developers can easily build a PWA-styled storefront. What’s more amazing is the implementation of the headless commerce concept using this platform. In Spartacus, the backend or business logic layer is completely decoupled from the frontend UI. As a result, it implements the concept of modularity in a better way, eliminating the rigidity and complexity of the monolith architecture.

Architecture of SAP Spartacus

All Spartacus SAP versions follow the principle of headless architecture where the frontend layer is decoupled from its backend. In other words, the UI components are no longer tightly integrated with the service processes and business logic. Developers can work on the frontend layer as a separate entity without having to deploy any code change to the backend.

Due to the decoupled architecture, Spartacus comes with built-in features and several customizable components that won’t impact the store’s performance or backend codebase. The frontend UI and other related components interact with SAP Commerce Cloud and other SAP or non-SAP tools and third-party plugins using REST APIs.

For instance, a catalog REST API gets triggered when a user searches for a product or clicks on a category link on the Spartacus UI. This API fetches all datasets from the SAP Commerce Cloud or any third-party website. It then provides the fetched datasets to Spartacus which then processes the sets and displays them on the UI as per the existing codebase.

What are the characteristics of SAP Spartacus?

SAP Hybris Spartacus comes with a wide array of features that not only help developers tackle the challenges of the previous accelerator codebase but also enhance the overall storefront performance and productivity. Below we have listed some of the key features that will help you understand the true potential of Spartacus in a better way.

1. Open-source: Thanks to Spartacus being an open-source platform, the JavaScript library functions and tools can be integrated with both SAP and non-SAP tools and APIs for better agility and performance.
2. SPA: It is mainly used to develop a single-page application where the codebase is much less complex than one would expect from a typical website with numerous pages integrated with one another.
3. Decoupled architecture: Another main feature of SAP Spartacus that makes it much faster than any other ecommerce storefront is the decoupled architecture. In other words, the frontend and backend layers are completely decoupled from one another and act as separate entities.
4. New feature upgrades: With each SAP Commerce Cloud upgrade, new OOTBs or out-of-the-box features are added to Spartacus. So, developers can easily extend the functionalities and even customize the existing components to meet the user expectations.
5. Customizable libraries: All the JavaScript-based library functions loaded in Spartacus can be customized. As a result, developers can reuse a single library function and introduce minor code changes as per the requirements instead of writing the entire codebase from scratch.

What are the advantages of implementing SAP Spartacus?

Before making the shift to SAP Spartacus, it will be better to know about its benefits beforehand. This way you can make a well-informed decision with ease.

1. Thanks to the decoupled architecture, developers can customize the UI components as and when required. They won’t have to worry about any negative impact on the backend workflows handling the UI functions.
2. The implementation of API service calls makes communication between the frontend layer and all other backend processes and tools faster and streamlined.
3. Another major benefit of implementing SAP Spartacus is faster time to market. In other words, the decoupled architecture allows developers to work solely on the UI and frontend components using pre-built library functions.
4. SAP Spartacus is upgradable and extendable, which means the library functions can be integrated with different tools and third-party plugins for better performance.

Conclusion

With SAP Spartacus, it is now possible for ecommerce businesses to deliver excellence and promising quality to the consumers. The platform allows customization of several UI components that would be otherwise impossible for a monolith architecture. So, integrating it with SAP Commerce Cloud seems to be a more feasible solution given the current market stats and hypercompetitive nature.