How to Choose the Best Microservice Frameworks for eCommerce Business

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What is a microservices framework?

A microservices framework is used to build a microservices architecture. The framework itself reduces the amount of code you need to write, for example, when creating a web application exclusively in JavaScript code.

Microservices architecture assumes that individual applications comprising the eCommerce technology stack are separately developed, deployed, and managed. A specific microservice is created to play a particular role, such as providing product search reviews, checkout, wishlists, etc.

The decentralized development process allows for experimenting with different solutions and deploying new functionalities for customers before the competition does.

How Microservices Can Help eCommerce Businesses

Online shopping continues to evolve, and the future is set to bring the adoption of technological changes that accelerate technology deployments, online marketing efforts, and scaling. With the burdens caused by monolithic eCommerce applications, microservices open an easy path to digital transformation.

Benefits of Microservices for eCommerce IT Teams

Microservices offer numerous benefits for technical infrastructure, which increases the overall efficiency of an organization.

Microservices:

• can be built and deployed using various languages and tools

• require less development time and a more flexible approach

• scale quickly

• are reusable — they can be replicated across different projects

• are better isolated from failures in other parts of the service

• are faster and significantly less resource-intensive when it comes to deployment and load balancing

• require less time spent on implementation

Benefits of Microservices for eCommerce Business Teams

Though the benefits of microservices are primarily addressed to IT teams, the business side of eCommerce also receives a solid operational boost.

Frontend changes can be implemented quickly and without developer assistance. Once development is freed from the rigid technology stack of a monolith and its dependencies, marketing teams can iterate at scale. Each business function of a monolith can be replaced by a dedicated microservice. By providing a custom pattern once, marketing teams gain a higher level of independence in customer experience-oriented activities.

Easy Scaling Microservices architecture enables easy and rapid scaling. Each service has its own lifecycle – it's created, modified, tested independently, and can be removed if needed without disrupting the entire system's operation. Thanks to this flexibility, growth-oriented eCommerce can gradually plan investments.

Daily Operations That Are More Resilient Failures in a single microservice do not affect the entire system and can be handled by a dedicated team that is not dependent on dev teams working on other parts of the eCommerce stack.

Cost Optimization The entire infrastructure can be highly cost-optimized because microservices are cloud-native. This allows each of them to be hosted on a different cloud instance based on its bandwidth requirements.

Why Do Microservices Matter in eCommerce?

Microservices architecture future-proofs eCommerce, allowing it to quickly react to market trends and customer expectations.

A microservices-oriented architecture enables:

• Rapid deployment of various new frontend touchpoints

• Implementation of headless systems that allow multiple frontends to work on a single backend system

• Separation of frontend from backend; this ensures that frontend traffic does not affect the backend

• An open path to composing eCommerce software with third-party applications

• Fast performance

• The best implementation of a technology stack, which gives merchants the freedom to choose the functionalities and features essential for the business

Nest.js

Nest.js is an open-source Node.js framework used for building backend systems. Currently, it's the fastest-growing Node.js framework. With Nest.js, you can build easy, scalable, performant, and loosely coupled applications. Furthermore, this framework supports databases such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL.

Nest.js was built on top of the previously mentioned Express.js. However, it offers many functionalities and out-of-the-box APIs. Similar to Express.js, Nest.js allows developers to build applications using less code.

Nest.js supports numerous Nest-specific modules for integration with standard technologies like TypeORM, Mongoose, GraphQL, Logging, Validation, Caching, WebSockets, etc. Another significant aspect of Nest.js is that it provides its users with detailed and well-maintained documentation.

NestJS Features

• TypeScript This framework uses TypeScript, which is a strongly typed language that is superior to JavaScript.

• Command Line Interface (CLI) NestJS has a robust CLI that increases productivity and makes the development process more manageable.

• Dependency Injection (DI) Container The framework includes a built-in DI container for building modular applications.

• Lazy Loading This module is used to load content only when necessary, which helps applications run more smoothly.

ExpressJS

Express.js is an open-source Node.js microservice application framework that provides a comprehensive set of features for building web and mobile applications. The framework is a fast, lightweight tool for Node.js development with capabilities for building high-quality APIs for mobile and web applications.

Additionally, Express.js serves as a layer built on top of Node.js to manage servers and routes. This framework provides developers with pre-written code and is used for building single-page, multi-page, and even hybrid web applications.

Express.js Features

• Fast Server-Side Development Express.js comes with Node.js features in the form of functions that developers can utilize anywhere in the program. This means the coding process is faster and easier.

• Middleware Middleware is a program component that accesses databases, client requests, and other middleware. This feature is responsible for systematically organizing various Express.js functions.

• Routing Express.js has a progressive routing mechanism for maintaining the state of a website along with its URLs.

• Templating Express.js has templating engines for building dynamic content on web pages by creating server-side HTML templates.

• Debugging This feature is essential for creating a successful product. Express.js can identify the specific part of the web application where errors are located.

Restify

Restify is a Node.js microservice framework optimized for building semantically correct RESTful web services ready for scaling. This framework is primarily used for performance optimization. Furthermore, Restify provides developers with two-way communication with web and client-side components.

Restify Features

• DTrace Support Restify automatically creates DTrace probes for developers when they add a new route/handler.

• Semantic Correction Following specifications is one of Restify's most important goals. It provides you with references to RFCs placed throughout its GitHub release and codebase.

• Error Handling With Restify, you can handle errors instantly and systematically. This framework provides numerous processes for finding bugs and errors.

Feathers

Feathers is a lightweight microservice framework for building real-time applications and REST APIs using JavaScript or TypeScript.

This framework can interact with any backend technology, supports multiple databases, and works with almost any frontend technology (React, VueJS, Angular, React Native, Android, or iOS).

Feathers Features

• Relational and Non-Relational Databases FeathersJS allows developers to interact with various relational and non-relational databases. The framework enables developers to effortlessly connect to different databases, query databases through a single interface, and swap databases.

• Accelerates Error Handling The Feathers framework can automatically return and also report errors to the client in a readable format.

• Authentication FeathersJS supports authentication. Developers can secure applications by performing email/password, token, and OAuth authentication. They can also add authentication features through special plugins.

• Extension and Customization Developers can easily integrate FeathersJS with web frameworks such as AngularJS, React, React Native, and VueJS. Furthermore, they can extend and customize the framework by integrating plugins.

LoopbackJS

Loopback.js is a Node.js and TypeScript framework for building APIs and microservices. This framework can create REST APIs with minimal to no code. Loopback.js provides Full Stack development capabilities. It includes pre-installed modules and functionalities.

LoopbackJS Features

• Nested Data Loopback.js uses schemas to create GraphQL data definitions and links defined in OAS to create a nested structure, authorizing (deeply) nested queries.

• Built-in Models All LoopBack applications have a set of predefined built-in models, such as User, Role, and Application. This means developers don't have to create these standard models from scratch.

• Routing LoopBack is built on Express and uses Express's routing system. But Express routing is limited to only a small portion of LoopBack's functionality. LoopBack uses a more detailed extension of the routing system.

• Middleware Phases LoopBack middleware is similar to Express middleware, but LoopBack adds the concept of phases to define the order in which middleware is called. This approach allows developers to avoid ordering issues encountered with traditional Express middleware.

AdonisJS

AdonisJs is a Node.js framework that leverages TypeScript for building microservice applications. It's one of the most renowned frameworks that runs on all major operating systems. This framework has a simple query builder that allows you to quickly construct straightforward queries.

AdonisJs Features

• Folder Structure This framework provides users with a convenient folder structure to help them stay organized.

• Validator AdonisJs has a dedicated validation provider feature for easy validation of user input data.

• Security AdonisJs possesses powerful tools to protect websites from standard web attacks.

• Testing The framework considers the tediousness of manual testing and allows developers to create functional unit tests to check their web applications.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot is a renowned framework for building microservice applications. It provides developers with numerous additional modules on Spring Cloud for creating microservice architectures. Spring Boot is excellent for building both small and large systems. This framework uses Inversion of Control (often called "Reversal of Control" in this context) to easily connect with other frameworks.

Spring Boot Features

• Lazy Initialization When this feature is enabled, beans are created as needed, rather than during application startup. This leads to reduced application startup time.

• Startup Failure This feature provides an error message and a specific action to fix the issue when the application fails to start.

• Application Availability When an application is deployed on a platform, it can provide details regarding its availability. For example, Spring Boot has out-of-the-box support for commonly used "liveness" and "readiness" availability states.

Hapi

Hapi is an open-source framework for microservice applications. It's another framework built with an architecture similar to Express.js for writing less code.

Developers like to use it due to its reliable security. It's an excellent option for creating proxy servers, REST APIs, and other desktop applications. Furthermore, Hapi has many built-in plugins, so developers don't need unofficial middleware.

Hapi Features

• Authentication and Authorization Hapi provides built-in authentication and authorization methods. For example, there are methods for anonymous, basic-auth, cookie-based, and token-based authentication.

• Caching This framework makes working with cache very convenient through strong client-side and server-side caching.

• Cookies Hapi makes working with cookies regulated, secure, and simple. To this end, it provides various configuration options.

• Simplified Error Handling Boom is part of the Hapi ecosystem, which provides tools for returning HTTP-friendly error objects.

• Process Monitoring Hapi has a plugin for monitoring and reporting various Hapi server events.

Koa.js

Koa's core has no middleware, but it contains an elegant collection of methods for writing servers quickly and easily. It is a new open-source web framework built by the creators of Express.js. This framework is a smaller, more expensive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. Koa uses async functions to avoid callbacks and improve error handling. It has no middleware and provides a comprehensive set of methods that make creating servers a fast and enjoyable task.

Koa.js Features

• ES6 Generators Koa.js uses ES6 generators to simplify synchronous programming and enable both upstream and downstream control flow.

• Error Handling The framework has built-in error protection that helps developers avoid website crashes. Developers can report errors using a simple try/catch command without writing additional code. There's also an option to customize error handling by changing the default settings.

• Context Object Koa.js uses Context to encapsulate response and request objects into a single object. The unified object makes creating web applications and APIs effortless for developers, including several helpful methods and evaluation tools.