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Extensibility model

API Only​

  • Webhooks. You can subscribe to more than a hundred events to receive data from Saleor.

  • API extensions. Enable behavior customization, for example, calculating shipping costs based on the package dimensions. Learn more

  • Dashboard extensions. Extend admin functionality using any front-end stack embeddable into iframes.

  • Granular permission control. Granular permissions for access tokens.

  • GraphQL oriented. Provide GraphQL queries to shape the data provided via Webhooks.

Why not plugin architecture?​

The plugin architecture is popular among open-source projects; classic examples would be Magento or Shopify. Such a model has direct coupling with the platform, which can be convenient to get started quickly but can also lead to many issues.

Benefits of decoupled architecture:

  • Technology agnostic. Technology stack freedom allows you to pick the best tool for the job and access a larger talent pool.

  • Improved security. Tight coupling increases security risks whereas decoupled architectures reduce the attack surface.

  • Independent deployment. You can deploy your microservices independently.

  • Reliability. Less risk of degrading performance or bringing the whole system down.

  • Scalability. You can allocate resources more efficiently for your services.

  • Cross team collaboration. Decoupled architectures allow teams to collaborate more effectively compared to plugins that create dependencies between teams and projects.

  • Open Standards. Using GraphQL means tapping into a larger ecosystem of tools and communities as opposed to limited, proprietary SDKs.

  • Debugging. Decoupled architectures make distinguishing platform issues from those caused by your own application more straightforward.