Backend Communication
You invoke actions and receive data from the backend through a pipeline request. Shopgate CONNECT includes many predefined pipelines, but you can alter the process logic of pipelines by developing custom extensions. Pipeline requests are named actions, such as getProduct, and they are similar to remote procedure calls with defined inputs and outputs. Pipeline requests are configurable and extensible.
Pipelines execute with a number of steps provided in JavaScript files. You can configure the order and input/output of data flow for each pipeline. Pipelines can take the output of a previous step and use it as input for the next step, or they can operate independently of the previous step.
For example, the image shows the getProduct pipeline. The getProduct pipeline contains steps (in black boxes) provided by Shopgate CONNECT. These steps return product information back to the app frontend. To add a bonus point provider, you can create a new step (the red box), which adds the bonus points data to the pipeline results. Add a custom React component on the frontend to display the new bonus points data in the app.
All backend processing is based on pipelines, which gives you the option to extend or replace all functionality with custom extensions.
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