Well! the simple answer is:
- It is a Progressive Web App (PWA) framework for the Magento 2 framework.
Yes! We can build the headless frontend for Magento 2 using PWA Studio, the official framework by Magento.
Cool! Now the question is, are there any other frameworks available for the same? As we know the popularity of Magento, so obviously we have some options like:
Let’s get back to PWA Studio. It is built on ReactJS and it uses GraphQL and REST API to communicate with Magento as a backend.
The frontend of PWA Studio is a building block of React components like Header, Footer, etc. In that, one component includes another component; let’s say the Header component includes a Logo to render the logo inside the header.
Furthermore, a component consists of logic and presentation:
- Presentation is a visual part that we see on the frontend.
- Logic plays behind the scenes.
Overall, it is a building of React components that have their own logic for fetching and presenting data to the user.
So what’s new here compared to the typical Magento frontend, as it is also doing the same job? The answer is in the following main bullet points.
- Speed
- On a typical website, when we traverse between pages, it loads whole page data and renders. While in a PWA, it only loads the required data.
- When the user goes from a category page to the product page, it only loads product data and presents it on the main section while it will not reload header, footer sections. That is an app-like experience.
- Offline mode
- It caches the data of visited categories and products into the local storage, so if the user’s network connection is lost then also the site will serve data in offline mode from the local storage.
- Install app
- The user can use your website as an app on mobile/tablet/desktop.
- So you do not need to create or manage a separate mobile application as you can get this in one go.
Check out more about PWA Studio here: https://developer.adobe.com/commerce/pwa-studio/