Live data from Hacker News

WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#21
post #8

Given Walmart's deep contributions and investments in the Backbone ecosystem [0], which were impressive in their own right, I'm even more impressed that they seem to have switched to a React-based front end stack in a few years. That seems pretty agile for a company the size of Walmart. [0] https://github.com/walmartlabs/thorax

The switch of creating this platform, changing the walmart.com tech stack, and open sourcing it is less than a year :). Has been a wild ride!

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#22

I have tried on multiple occasions to get started with react and every time the large amount of setup prevents me from getting anywhere useful. After looking over the docs I am somewhat hopeful that this might bridge the gap.

I second the recommendation for Create-React-App. It's explicitly intended to be a no-config, no-setup, Just Start Writing Code tool with a great developer experience.

Also, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials, articles, and resources for React and related topics, at https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links . It's a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem.

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#24

My experience is that Walmart's website is truly abysmally poor. Releasing their software is likely a scourge upon other commercial vendors who might inadvertently try to imitate them.

Prices take longer than the rest of the page to show up and occasionally you will get a Price: [NaN]

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#25

I have tried on multiple occasions to get started with react and every time the large amount of setup prevents me from getting anywhere useful. After looking over the docs I am somewhat hopeful that this might bridge the gap.

If you're interested, I am in the process of writing a react ebook, and I'm trying to focus on being very simple and explaining every step along the way. In fact, the whole first half of the book doesn't use a server at all (it uses script tags like https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tutorial.html).

If you (or anyone else) is interested, I'd be happy to give you the chapters as I finish them, and would love to hear any feedback you have about it. Just send me an email (in my profile).

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#26

My blog post that talks more about the release: https://medium.com/walmartlabs/introducing-electrode-an-open...

A lot of folks have debated whether there is a need or a place for a "Rails for Node" platform that brings together a set of blessed libraries that work well together and a set of tools for rapidly building software with that set of tools. In that sense at least, Electrode seems to have some structural similarities to Rails.

Do you see Electron as potentially having a Rails-like role of bringing together libraries and packages into a more "plug and play" development environment for people who want buy in to comprehensive Node development platform?

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#27
post #26

My blog post that talks more about the release: https://medium.com/walmartlabs/introducing-electrode-an-open...

A lot of folks have debated whether there is a need or a place for a "Rails for Node" platform that brings together a set of blessed libraries that work well together and a set of tools for rapidly building software with that set of tools. In that sense at least, Electrode seems to have some structural similarities to Rails. Do you see Electron as potentially having a Rails-like role of bringing together libraries an…

Internally, we do have a set of blessed libraries to keep the site and teams unified. To ensure we don't go stale, we usually have a team or so experimenting with something that we can bring into "Electrode Core".

Externally, for the "Electrode Core", we will continue to maintain a set of libraries that play well together, but I expect to see people doing their own thing. I see what we are doing with core as more of a jumping off point for your app and setting you on the right path for managing many apps/components (with our notion of archetypes that manage your dependencies instead of top level app) and than people will mix technologies that they want.

We will continue to maintain our list though and manage dependencies through archetype (I think archetype is a powerful idea).

"Electrode Modules and Electrode Tools" are independent to the rest of Electrode. You can use these modules/tools independently of Electrode Core.

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#28
This is somewhat surprising, in a good way. A lot of large companies are pretty risk averse, and this prevents them from releasing the source for their shopping platforms into the wild. I'm sure there are some differences between the open source version and what they actually run.

Is this the complete platform? What's held back? I would think the analytic tools for usage and sales, how they store user data, and perhaps whatever they use to build profiles about individual users' shopping behavior. But that's just speculation.

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complexity isn't likely completely free.. but could be incredibly useful for a lot of universal rendering scenarios... the above the fold content loading, and the component render caching server-side is particularly interesting. Now if Walmart.com just didn't look quite so hideous... but that's another issue... The tech stack for electrode is definitely interesting, and looking forward to playing around with it.

I hope you like it! I personally think that the above the fold content, server side caching, and redux-router-engine will make a positive impact on the server side rendering react community. We saw HUGE gains in performance using these. We are working on a blog post that goes through the performance numbers we saw on the live site. I also think Electrode Explorer will be popular for bigger companies that have many co…

Thanks for the reply, yeah, from what I've read and seen so far it definitely looks interesting... And seems to resolve a lot of the issues I had very early on with ismorphic^wuniversal rendering back when Yahoo's fluxible app had just come out. The render caching seems very cool as well, making up for the general double-render for fetching data triggered from the component.

Right now at the day job I'm stuck in angular 1.x hell, though my contract is up in a couple weeks and looking for something in the React space again. Too much angular work in Phoenix to avoid completely though.

Aside: wish I could get a hold of a hiring manager there if you have space for new people, have never even gotten a callback from walmart labs, and would love to work for your org.

Re: WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

#30
To any Walmart developers reading: thank you for open sourcing this!

However, there's something I'd like even more than your time spent on this project. Currently, walmart.com will indicate to customers that there is inventory available in-store that there sometimes isn't. This can lead to a terrible customer experience when you order something that runs out of stock after you order it, and your order is just cancelled. It seems like there should be the ability to have it backordered at the price at which you purchased. Could Walmart instead always honor the price at which an item was purchased online even if stock in-store runs out, and give the customer the option to cancel the order or get a 20% discount on any item if you don't want to get it on backorder? Right now this can be done, but it requires the store manager's approval, which can involve having to file a complaint, which seems completely unnecessary.

Post reply on HN