Skills for Success

This guide covers the key technical skills for successful development with PWA Kit.

Generally speaking, PWA Kit developers should be comfortable with:

  • Building universal React.js applications.
  • Coding in ES6 JavaScript.
  • Styling UI components with CSS.
  • Working with RESTful APIs like the Salesforce Commerce API.
  • Developing web applications with Node.js and Express.js.
  • Using npm to manage packages and run scripts.

If that describes you, then you're ready to dive right in! What follows is a more comprehensive inventory of skills used in building a storefront application with PWA Kit. Don't worry if you're not an expert on every single thing. Working with PWA Kit presents plenty of opportunities to have fun learning new skills that are in high demand!

A PWA Kit app is coded in modern JavaScript. Even your CSS is written in JavaScript!

A headless commerce app makes frequent network requests, so knowledge of fetch() is crucial. We recommend using a universal fetch library (cross-fetch, for example) that works both in a browser and in a Node.js environment. For maximum performance, you must be able write asynchronous code with Promises and async and await.

React is the foundation for all PWA Kit apps. The official React documentation is an excellent place to start. It's so helpful that we recommend reading all of it! For a more targeted approach to learning React, try focusing on the components, props, the rendering lifecycle, and state management, including new concepts like hooks that were introduced in React 16.8.

Your app gets all its commerce data from Salesforce Commerce Cloud using APIs. You should be familiar with RESTful APIs in general and the B2C Commerce API and Open Commerce API (OCAPI) in particular.

Depending on the details of your project, additional knowledge and skills in the following areas will be an asset:

  • Architectural principles for single-page applications and the backend-for-frontend pattern
  • Web page performance testing using Lighthouse and WebPageTest
  • The PWA Checklist
  • Interacting with APIs using tools like cURL and Postman
  • HTTP networking and caching
  • Web analytics
  • Search engine optimization
  • Configuring build tools like webpack
  • Making DNS changes and performing cutovers
  • Working with third-party JavaScript libraries to enhance site functionality
  • Responsive web design layout techniques using media queries, flexbox, and grid