There are few updates on how the plugins are created in XC 10.
Sitecore Commerce 10 SDK does not include Visual Studio Extension (VSIX) package for creating a plugin project.
Let’s get started and look into the steps to create a new plugin in Sitecore Commerce 10. If you have already set up your commerce development environment, please skip to step 2
Open Powershell in admin mode and navigate to the folder nupkg file is copied and execute following command to install package
dotnet new -i .\Sitecore.Commerce.Plugin.Template.6.0.4.nupkg
Run the dotnet new command and should be able to see Sitecore Commerce Sample Plugin template
4. Create a new Sitecore Commerce Plugin Project
As we have a plugin project template we should be able create a new plugin project.
Execute following command in Powershell. Navigate to the solution src folder-
dotnet new pluginsample -o Sitecore.Commerce.Plugin.SampleTest
New plugin project is created with the project name specified in command.
Include the project in Customer.Sample.Solution and compile.
Notice even though the command has project name “Sitecore.Commerce.Plugin.SampleTest” the actual project is created as “Sitecore.Commerce.Plugin.Sample”. You will have to rename this unfortunately as per your requirement.
Sitecore Experience Commerce 10 has come up with great new features like Dynamic Bundles, Free gift with Purchase promotion and a sample Sitecore DAM to Commerce connector.
Before you start looking into this, it is important to setup the development environment to debug and test the changes you are making to engine.
Main changes I could see compared to previous versions are integration with Content Hub and Configuring the Commerce Engine using environment variables which not only helps for on-premise installation of Commerce Instance but also helps setup the Docker technology where XC solution is running in containers.
In this post I will walk you through on how to setup the development environment. This post assumes you have Sitecore Commerce Engine along with Visual Studio 2019 installed on developer workstation. If Commerce not installed no worries see this post on how to install Sitecore XC 10 step-by-step.
Copy the downloaded SDK Sitecore.Commerce.Engine.SDK.6.0.130.zip on your development folder. e.g: c:\development. Note– there is an update on 19th August where the external dependencies are removed. Download the package again if you have a version before this date.
Whilst opening solution login from slpartners.myget.org will be prompted
Create an account on https://slpartner.myget.org/ and login here. You may unload Plugin.Sample.ContentHub project if you dont want to integrate ContentHub and the login should not require. Also note myget account has a trial for 14 days.
Build the Solution. It should restore the package and build successfully.
(optional)Rename the Solution name. In this case I have renamed to Retail.Commerce
(Optional) Create Foundation and Feature projects. Build the solution again.
Step 3- Important – Commerce Engine configuration
Sitecore.Commerce.Engine project should have a config.json file in wwwroot folder. Open this file you will see the placeholders that needs to be filled in.
Instead updating config file, you should update the launchSettings.json and the placeholders in config.json will be updated on launch on commerce engine.
Similarly Global.json you can find this in wwwroot/bootstrap folder of your Sitecore.Commerce.Engine project. Again this file has the Placeholders that will be populated from launchSettings.json,
You need to update mainly following variables in launchSettings.json file for both config and global json. There are other variables apart from listed below, you may need to update those based on your site instance name etc.-
If you are looking for upgrade to Sitecore 10, below are the various options you are able to install Sitecore 10.
Sitecore XP 10
Sitecore Installation Assistant (SIA)
Sitecore Installation Assistant helps guides you through the Sitecore XP Developer Workstation installation. Use this option to review system requirements, install prerequisites and complete the entire installation process. With Sitecore 10 you have a option to also install SXA with SIA.
Sitecore Install Framework (SIF) is a Microsoft PowerShell module that supports local and remote installations of Sitecore Experience Platform.
SIF deploys Web Deploy Packages (WDP) by passing parameters to SIF configuration through a Microsoft PowerShell module and is fully extensible. The Sitecore Experience Platform is designed to be secure-by-default. For developer environments all the required self-signed certificates are created automatically if you do not provide any. In a production environment, you can provide your own certificates In a non-production environment, you can choose to have the module generate the certificates for you.
You must set up SIF before you can install Sitecore Experience Platform
Sitecore Containers support rapid deployment and more efficient solution and team onboarding with modern Docker and Kubernetes technology.
Sitecore Experience Platform 10.0.0 uses Docker Compose as the container orchestrator on developer workstations. Docker Compose is a simple containerdeployment tool that is bundled with Docker for Windows. Sitecore container images can be deployed with other tools but we recommend that you use Docker Compose to deploy the containers that form the Sitecore Experience Platform.
After installing Sitecore 10 using Sitecore Installation Assistant (see the blog here how to install Sitecore XP 10 usig SIA) you might find the Identity Server not working since it is not able to start the process with command line ‘dotnet .\Sitecore.IdentityServer.Host.dll’
You may see this error in Application logs.
You may also see Sitecore login been not redirected to identity server site instead redirects to XP login page.
To identify the problem first try manually starting the process in powershell. You can find command to start the process in error.
Navigate to the identity server site physical folder and execute this command
dotnet .\Sitecore.IdentityServer.Host.dll
This should tell the solution to the issue i.e. it needs AspNetCore version 2.1.16 to be installed.
