Published: Wed, 02/03/16Download this episodeCommerce 2.x for Drupal 8

• What has been the biggest success of Commerce on D7?
  • By starting from scratch on D7 technologies we created a solution that is intuitive to Drupal developers and easier to extend. And with 60k installs, we’ve set a record for ecommerce on Drupal in general.
• And what do you think have been its biggest weaknesses?
  • Not prioritizing UX from the start. Took us a year after the 1.0 release to create Inline Entity Form and recreate the admin screens as a part of the Kickstart. At that point many people already had the impression that Commerce was hard to use.
  • Not providing enough direction to developers. Flexibility is important, as is having unopinionated code. But developers also need to have a clear and obvious path forward. Having an opinionated layer on top, with sane defaults, can save a lot of development time and prevent frustration.
  • Not prioritizing certain features, leaving them to contrib instead. Modules that make up the checkout ux (checkout progress, checkout redirect, addressbook), discounts. Of course, all generals are smart after the battle.
• How has that influenced the development of Commerce 2.x?
  • With Commerce 2.x we once again started from scratch, evaluating all feedback received in the 1.x cycle. We decided to address all three of these major points.
  • Better UX means paying more attention to the product and order admin experience, as well as providing better checkout out of the box.
  • Better APIs means doing more work for the developer, especially around pricing and taxes.
  • And finally, we’re growing the core functionality. We’re expecting a dozen contrib modules to be no longer needed, as we address edge cases and add functionality.
• What are some of the biggest new features of Commerce 2.x?
  • Multi-store will allow people to bill customers from different branches (US and FR offices, for example), or create marketplaces like Etsy.
  • Improved support for international markets means better address forms, better currency management, and significantly better tax support, the kind that will reduce the need for people to use cloud-based tax solutions, at least in Europe.
  • Support for multiple order types, each with its own checkout and workflows will allow developers to create tailored experiences for different kinds of products, such as events, ebooks, t-shirts.
  • An integrated discounts UI means more power to the store admin.
  • And this is just the beginning. Under the hood there are many small features and improvements, over both 1.x and Kickstart.
• What has Commerce done to integrate better with the PHP and Drupal communities?
  • We’ve created several independent ecommerce libraries, attacking currency formatting, address management and taxes. These libraries are now being adopted by the wider PHP community, bringing us additional contributors.
  • On the Drupal side we’ve joined forces with the Profile2 team, creating the D8 Profile module that we’ll use for customer profiles. We’re also depending on Inline Entity Form, which is now shared with the Media team. We’re also moving some of our generic entity code into a new Entity API module, maintained together with Daniel Wehner and other community members.
  • Finally, we have been champions of Composer, the replacement for Drush Make, and required for any module that depends on external libraries.

The Future of Commerce 2.x

• Commerce 2.x is now in alpha2. What’s included? What’s next?
  • Alpha2 includes stores and products, as well as initial order and cart implementations.
  • It also has functional currency management and formatting, address and profile management.
  • Alpha3, to be released in the next two weeks, is focusing on completing the order and cart implementations, and adding the initial checkout implementation.
  • Post-alpha3 our focus will be on discounts, taxes, and finally, payments.
  • The best way to learn more about this is to read the drupalcommerce.org blog, where I post “Commerce 2.x stories” detailing work done so far. We have several new posts planned for february.
• When can we expect Commerce 2.x to be production ready?
  • Our current goal is to release a production ready beta by end of march. We should also have Search API and Rules by then. Leading up to DrupalCon New Orleans we’ll be helping the community implement shipping and licensing and port payment modules. At the same time, we’ll be focusing on reaching RC status.
• What’s the status of commerce contrib? Like PayPal, Authorize.net, etc.
• How can the community help?
  • Each new alpha welcomes more manual testing and feedback.
  • We also have office hours every wednesday at 3PM GMT+1 on #drupal-commerce where people can discuss code and help out on individual issues.
• Do you feel that requiring Commerce to be installed via Composer will impact adoption?
  • The average developer is already familiar with Composer and will benefit greatly from it, just like D7 developers benefited from Drush Make. Getting Drupal, Commerce, and all dependencies is a single Composer command, as is keeping it all up to date.
  • People unwilling to run Composer on their servers can run it locally and commit the result.
  • I’m also hoping we’ll be able to offer distribution-like tarballs on either drupal.org or drupalcommerce.org as we get closer to a release candidate.

Questions from Twitter

• howdytom ‏@howdytom
  Commerce Kickstart provides a great toolset with basic configuration. Is there a plan to do a Commerce Kickstart for Drupal 8? If not, will Commerce provide more out of the box solutions for a full featured shop?
  • Commerce Kickstart had several parts.
  • The first one was about providing better admin and checkout UX, as well as discounts. That’s now handled by Commerce out of the box.
  • The second was about providing a demo store with a developed set of frontend pages. That’s going to stay in contrib and will greatly benefit from the flexibility introduced by Drupal 8 and CMI.
  • It’s too early to plan a distribution yet. Drupal 8 has almost no contrib, and drupal.org doesn’t support using Composer to build distributions yet.
  • However, we are using Composer to provide single-command site templates, the kind that gives you Drupal core, Commerce and other modules. This will allow us to provide good starting points for different use cases, similar in nature to Commerce Kickstart 1.x.
  • Once 2017 comes around, we’ll investigate next steps.
• Jimmy Henderickx ‏@StryKaizer
  In commerce d8, will it be possible to alter a product name dynamicly (either by hook or other solution)?
• Czövek András ‏@czovekandras
  Any plans making iframe payment methods 1st class citizens? Thinking of running checkout form callbacks.
• Marc van Gend ‏@marcvangend
  How did D8 architecture change the way you code your modules?

Episode Links: Bojan on drupal.orgBojan on Twitter#Drupal-Commerce channel on IRCCommerce 2.x blog postsInstalling Commerce 2.x using ComposerDrupal Commerce DocumentationTim Millwood’s MultiversionTags: CommerceDrupal 8planet-drupal