FastStore API
FastStore API is an interface between your ecommerce platform and your store's frontend. It uses GraphQL, a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling queries, in order to expose structured data from everyday ecommerce tasks to frontend components.
The FastStore API allows you to get all information you need for a given page. You can customize your query to get exactly the data you need and even extend the GraphQL schema to fetch data not natively available. Following these best practices helps to maintain your site's performance at optimal levels.
With the FastStore API, you can:
- Retrieve product data.
- Add items to the cart.
- Apply promotions to products.
- Filter search results.
Also, thanks to a type-safe GraphQL protocol, the FastStore API allows developers to fetch only the strongly typed data needed for building robust and responsive solutions. In practice, developers can source the FastStore API to the Next.js or Gatsby data layers and consume it on frontend components to create stores that use the Jamstack architecture.
caution
When building your storefront with FastStore, you must not send requests to APIs other than the FastStore API. If you need to access other data not available in the native FastStore API schema, you must do this by extending the GraphQL schema. Otherwise, site performance may be compromised and lead to 504 timeout errors.
info
To learn more about GraphQL and its main concepts, visit the official GraphQL website.
Key features​
FastStore API is based on Schema.org and inspired by clean architecture.
Improved brand findability​
FastStore API extends and simplifies Schema.org, a set of agreed definitions for implementing structured data developed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex.
The Schema markup aids search engines in understanding and displaying your content in a relevant way. It may improve your brand's findability by leading your website to a higher ranking in search results and, as a result, to more clicks and interactions with your store's website.
Flexible backend for frontend architecture​
The FastStore API types and resolvers use a clean architecture to tackle specific ecommerce needs. The types specified in this schema are platform agnostic and may be used to build a wide range of custom frontend solutions. For instance:
- Develop an ecommerce website with Next.js or Gatsby.
- Create an Apollo Server instance on Heroku.
- Run the executable schema in a function on Next.js.
Playground​
You can use the GraphQL playground below to test and explore the FastStore API.
You can also install the @faststore/api dependency in your project to start exploring the data layer by running a local server. Learn more in the Get started guide.
Going beyond​
With GraphQL, you can also Extend the FastStore API schema.
And if you wish to use an ecommerce platform that is not yet supported, see how you can Create inline resolvers.