vendure/CLAUDE.md

Vendure Development Guide

Project Overview

Vendure is a headless e-commerce framework built on NestJS, TypeORM, and GraphQL. This is a Lerna monorepo (fixed versioning) containing all official packages.

Key Architecture

• Backend: NestJS + Apollo GraphQL + TypeORM
• Admin UI (legacy): Angular 19 + Clarity UI
• Dashboard (new): React 19 + Radix UI + Vite
• Package Manager: npm + Lerna v9
• Testing: Vitest
• Node: >= 20

Package Structure

Core Packages

• @vendure/core - Main server framework
• @vendure/common - Shared types/utilities
• @vendure/testing - E2E test utilities

UI Packages

• @vendure/admin-ui - Angular admin (legacy)
• @vendure/dashboard - React admin (new, replacing Angular)
• @vendure/admin-ui-plugin - Serves admin UI
• @vendure/ui-devkit - UI extension authoring

Plugins

• @vendure/asset-server-plugin - Asset serving + S3
• @vendure/email-plugin - Email notifications
• @vendure/elasticsearch-plugin - Search
• @vendure/job-queue-plugin - BullMQ/Pub-Sub jobs
• @vendure/payments-plugin - Stripe/Mollie
• @vendure/graphiql-plugin - GraphQL IDE
• @vendure/harden-plugin - Security hardening
• @vendure/sentry-plugin - Error tracking

Development Only

• dev-server - Local dev environment (NOT published)
• e2e-common - Shared E2E config

Development Workflow

Standard Flow

1. Make changes to a package
2. Build that package: cd packages/<name> && npm run build (or npm run watch for continuous)
3. If needed, update packages/dev-server/dev-config.ts to test new features
4. Restart dev server: cd packages/dev-server && npm run dev

Initial Setup

npm install
npm run build
docker-compose up -d mariadb
cd packages/dev-server
npm run populate
npm run dev

Common Commands

From root:

npm run build              # Build all packages
npm run watch:core-common  # Watch core + common (most common during dev)
npm run test               # Run all unit tests
npm run e2e                # Run all E2E tests
npm run lint               # ESLint with auto-fix
npm run codegen            # Generate GraphQL types

From packages/dev-server:

npm run dev                # Start server + worker
npm run populate           # Seed database with test data
npm run dashboard:dev      # Vite dev for dashboard

Database Options

# Default: MariaDB
docker-compose up -d mariadb

# PostgreSQL
docker-compose up -d postgres_16
DB=postgres npm run populate

# SQLite (no Docker needed)
DB=sqlite npm run populate

Testing

• Unit tests: Co-located as *.spec.ts, run with npm run test
• E2E tests: In packages/<name>/e2e/ as *.e2e-spec.ts
• Debug E2E: E2E_DEBUG=true npm run e2e (1800s timeout)

Code Style

• Indentation: 4 spaces
• Quotes: Single quotes
• Line length: 110 (Prettier), 170 (ESLint max)
• Trailing commas: Always
• Semicolons: Yes
• Imports: Alphabetically sorted with blank lines between groups

Commit Format

Conventional commits enforced by commitlint:

type(scope): message

Types: feat, fix, docs, perf, style, refactor, test, chore
Scopes: core, common, admin-ui, dashboard, email-plugin, etc.

GraphQL

• Two APIs: Admin API (/admin-api) and Shop API (/shop-api)
• Default port: 3000
• Schema files generated via npm run codegen
• Playground available at API paths when debug enabled

Key Files

• packages/dev-server/dev-config.ts - Dev server configuration (plugins, DB, etc.)
• packages/core/src/config/vendure-config.ts - VendureConfig type definition
• lerna.json - Monorepo version (currently 3.5.2)
• docker-compose.yml - Dev infrastructure (DBs, Redis, Elasticsearch, Keycloak)

Branches

• master - Bug fixes (default PR target)
• minor - New features
• major - Breaking changes

Tips

• When editing @vendure/core, you usually need to watch @vendure/common too: npm run watch:core-common
• The dev-server imports packages via TypeScript paths, so rebuilds are picked up on restart
• Check packages/dev-server/test-plugins/ for example plugin implementations
• Dashboard dev uses Vite with HMR, run separately with npm run dashboard:dev