Managed Runtime (MRT) Data Store

The MRT data store stores B2C Commerce settings, such as site preferences and Page Designer changes, and makes those settings available to Storefront Next. Your Storefront Next app accesses settings from the data store, which makes settings retrieval faster and more performant because there is no need for B2C Commerce API (SCAPI) calls to get those settings. Also, page descriptions for changed Page Designer pages are stored in the data store where the storefront gets them, eliminating the need to build page layouts for each shopper request.

In this section:

Use the Managed Runtime (MRT) data store to get site preferences that administrators set in Business Manager. Access site preferences in different contexts within your Storefront Next app.

The data store middleware is bundled and exported as dataStoreMiddleware. Register it in src/root.tsx. Make sure that siteContextMiddleware runs first so that the site-preferences middleware can resolve the current site ID.

The Storefront Next retail template configures the data store middleware for you.

MRT sets these required environment variables in production:

  • AWS_REGION
  • MOBIFY_PROPERTY_ID
  • DEPLOY_TARGET

Optionally, set SFNEXT_DATA_STORE_UNAVAILABLE_MODE = fallback to return an empty object instead of throwing when the data store is unreachable.

Use the sync getters in any server loader or action. Both getters return Record<string, unknown>, which you cast or validate at the call site.

To access site preferences in React components, read them in the route loader and pass them to components via useLoaderData. There is no client-side hook for site preferences.

Use MRT_DATA_STORE_DEFAULTS to seed values without a real data store. Prefix site preference keys with the site ID.

Data Store Keys:

  • Global: custom-global-preferences
  • Site: {siteId}-custom-site-preferences

A job syncs site preferences to the data store based on the B2C Target Info and Site IDs configured for the Managed Runtime environment. Site preferences can take up to 5 minutes to take effect. To sync site preferences manually, run the sfcc-monitor-and-sync-mrt-site-settings job in Business Manager under Administration > Operations > Jobs.

The jobs page showing the site preferences job

This image shows the details of the site preferences job. Site preferences job details

The results of the manually run job are available in Administration > Operations > Job History.

When a merchant makes a change to Page Designer pages and components in staging, a system job deploys the changes to Managed Runtime (MRT) every 5 minutes. B2C Commerce prebuilds each Page Designer page and sends it to the MRT data store. The storefront reads the page description from the data store instead of assembling the page on every shopper request. This approach improves storefront performance by eliminating the need to build page layouts dynamically for each shopper.

You don’t author manifests manually. The system automatically builds them from your Page Designer pages without any changes required from you in Business Manager.

The Page Designer update mechanism described here applies only to Storefront Next. It doesn’t apply to other storefront types, including PWA Kit, SFRA, or Site Genesis.

Two preconfigured system jobs deliver manifests to your storefront.

  • sfcc-push-page-manifests: The system runs this job automatically on production after replication. This job picks up the manifests that have been replicated from staging and pushes them to the MRT data store.
  • sfcc-generate-and-push-page-manifests: Run this job manually on production or development instances to push changes to the data store immediately. From Business Manager, go to Administration > Operations > Jobs, locate the job, and run it. This job generates manifests from the current instance and pushes them to the data store.

After either job runs, check the results in Business Manager at Administration > Operations > Job History. A successful job shows a status of OK or Finished. If the job fails, review the log details to identify the issue.

Follow this workflow to publish Page Designer changes to your storefront:

  1. Author content: A merchant authors page content in Page Designer on the staging instance.
  2. Replicate to production: An administrator replicates the changes from staging to production.
  3. Wait for automatic sync: The system automatically runs the sfcc-push-page-manifests job on production after replication completes.
  4. Verify on storefront: Shoppers see the updated content on the storefront. Verify the changes by viewing the affected pages.

If you make changes directly on production without replicating from staging, the automatic job doesn’t pick them up. To push these changes immediately:

  1. From Business Manager, go to Administration > Operations > Jobs.
  2. Locate the sfcc-generate-and-push-page-manifests job.
  3. Click Run to execute the job.
  4. Verify that the job completed successfully in Administration > Operations > Job History.
  5. Check the affected pages on your storefront to confirm the changes appear.