A Software Engineer's Guide to Vendure: Headless Commerce with NestJS and GraphQL

vendure-ecommerce/vendure

Think of Vendure as a "Headless Commerce Framework". Unlike traditional platforms that give you a pre-built store, Vendure provides the powerful engine (the "headless" part) and lets you build whatever frontend you want (React, Vue, Next.js, or even a mobile app) using its robust API.

From a technical perspective, Vendure stands out for a few key reasons

Modern Tech Stack
It’s built with Node.js, NestJS, and TypeScript. If you’re already in the JavaScript ecosystem, the learning curve is very shallow.

GraphQL First
Every single action you can take in the admin UI is available via a GraphQL API. This means "type-safe" development and efficient data fetching.

Total Extensibility
Need a custom tax calculation logic? A specific loyalty point system? Vendure uses a Plugin System that allows you to hook into almost any part of the lifecycle.

Database Agnostic
Thanks to TypeORM, it supports PostgreSQL (recommended), MySQL, MariaDB, and more.

The easiest way to see it in action is using the official installer.

Open your terminal and run

npm init vendure@latest
# OR
yarn create vendure

The wizard will ask you which database you want to use and if you want to populate it with some "mock" data (highly recommended for your first time!).

Once installed, your main entry point is usually src/index.ts. It initializes the server using a configuration object.

One of the most common tasks is adding a Custom Plugin. Let’s say you want to log a message every time a new product is created.

import { VendurePlugin, EventBus, ProductEvent } from '@vendure/core';

@VendurePlugin({
    imports: [],
    providers: [],
    configuration: config => {
        // This is where you can modify the global VendureConfig
        return config;
    },
})
export class MyCustomLoggerPlugin {
    constructor(private eventBus: EventBus) {
        // We subscribe to the ProductEvent
        this.eventBus.ofType(ProductEvent).subscribe((event) => {
            if (event.type === 'created') {
                console.log(`New product created: ${event.product.name}`);
            }
        });
    }
}

To use this, you simply add MyCustomLoggerPlugin to the plugins array in your vendure-config.ts.

Since it's GraphQL-based, fetching products from your frontend looks like this

The Query

query GetProducts {
  products(options: { take: 5 }) {
    items {
      id
      name
      variants {
        price
      }
    }
  }
}

The Response

{
  "data": {
    "products": {
      "items": [
        {
          "id": "1",
          "name": "Laptop",
          "variants": [{ "price": 120000 }]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Vendure is perfect if you want to "own" your code while standing on the shoulders of a very well-engineered giant. It handles the boring stuff (auth, sessions, stock levels) so you can focus on building unique shopping experiences.