We continue publishing posts about Magento Progressive Web Applications (PWA). Earlier, we spoke about PWA in general and Magento PWA studio. Now it’s time to talk more about Venia PWA storefront - a proof-of-concept for this toolset.
Venia is one of three key packages provided as parts of Magento PWA studio. As mentioned above, it is a kind of demo offered by Magento to show what can be done using PWA studio. Initially, Venia is optimized for mobile devices, supports display of basic product information, such as SKU, item name, item price, product images, etc., and has simple category pages. The package is free, and it is pretty easy to set up for an experienced developer, and it already provides all the essential functions needed to set up the store.
To communicate with the system backend, Venia connects to another Magento PWA Studio - Peregrine component, fetching the data. The developers can choose which features and components should be supported, and such interactions offer significant flexibility.
It is worth mentioning that a non-modified Venia UI has its downsides. For example, compared to pure Magento, missing built-in support for downloadable and virtual products, no support for product videos, and fewer customer account pages, but due to high customizability, experienced developers can easily implement those and other features you need.
