Storefront APIs

B2B and D2C stores built with LWR templates support Storefront APIs that help you build custom Lightning Web Components (LWCs) including headers, footers, and banners. Storefront APIs connect LWCs with data and execute processes, like adding a product to a wishlist or a cart, or applying a coupon to an order. Storefront APIs simplify LWC creation and help integrate components into larger page contexts.

Implementing components with Storefront APIs delivers distinct advantages over those relying on platform UI APIs and Aura controllers:

• Security - Storefront APIs automatically apply guardrails, such as buyer entitlement, that protect transactions and personalize customer journeys, with minimum risk.
• Performance and Scalability - Storefront APIs ensure that the same data is not requested and retrieved multiple times. Optimized to use multiple cache layers (browser, CDN, server), Storefront APIs retrieve information efficiently. Storefront Actions, for example, are designed to fetch data from the nearest available source.
• Convenience - Storefront APIs aggregate data from multiple sources and objects, like catalogs, or price books, and can execute business logic (fetch a product price, determine promotion eligibility).
• UI Cohesiveness - Components that implement Storefront APIs help ensure a consistent, cohesive customer experience. Cart components that use Wire Adapters, for example, achieve real-time reactivity: adding an item to a cart automatically updates the cart icon in the header.

The Storefront APIs fetch and display data for Commerce, Platform, and CMS products and include Imperative APIs, Wire Adapters, and Storefront Actions. Each of these differ in how and when they retrieve data for your component. A State Management layer provides access to hosted data via REST APIs and also coordinates operations that engage and update builder components. For example, when a buyer adds a product to the cart via a Storefront API, the State Management layer assures that this updates the list of cart items and the cart status icon. Taken together, the Storefront APIs provide a comprehensive framework for a dynamic shopping experience.

• Imperative APIs are process-oriented functions that, for example, call a Connect API method (POST, PUT, PATCH) to update data and return an outcome. Imperative calls typically retrieve hosted data when triggered by a page load or button click. Imperative APIs prompt updates to related entities including Wire Adapters, all orchestrated via State Management.
• Wire Adapters specify a GET method to call and retrieve data from a hosted data source. The adapter automatically updates properties in the LWC when hosted source data changes. When the LWC loads or updates, it executes the adapter call and retrieves the data in real time. For more information, see Understand the Wire Service.
• Storefront Actions are events, such as adding an item to a cart or using a filter to search on a product variant, that trigger updates to closely-related LWCs. Unlike actual backend API endpoint communication, Storefront Actions react to UI clicks more responsively, by making changes to related page-level components in chain-of-sequence fashion within a proximate scope. When a customer clicks a quantity selector component, for example, a createCartItemsLoadAction refreshes the quantity displayed in the cart. Tight data binding ensures that the triggered operation gets and sets data from the closest source. That said, Storefront Actions can result in calls (via Wire Adapters or Imperative APIs) to Rest API endpoints

These tables provide information about custom component Imperative APIs and adapters.

Storefront Actions are centrally combined in the component bundle commerce/actionApi. The table shows the factory methods for this bundle.