Adobe Experience Manager Edge Delivery is a huge performance bump for AEM sites, but AEM Edge Commerce is still in its early days. Adobe has made it clear that Edge Delivery Services (EDS) is the future of AEM sites. It embraces the latest browser standards and simplifies content delivery and scales. However, it differs significantly from the RESTful APIs, Content Repositories (JCR), and Sling, which we know so well from AEM. Like any new technology, it is evolving quickly, and there are some natural gaps in functionality as official solutions become available.
Although the headful Luma theme that ships with Adobe Commerce is the most popular commerce front end, Headless is not new to Adobe Commerce. PWA Studio has been around since before Adobe acquired Magento, as have third-party themes like Hyvä. However, with the native performance and simplicity of EDS, Adobe is taking some of what it has learned with PWA Studio and focusing its attention on Commerce Dropins. But Dropins is in heavy development, and it will take a while before it has full coverage.
Atama's Luma Bridge for Adobe Commerce has what current Adobe Commerce customers need to move to AEM Edge Delivery Services (EDS). We have been working with Adobe and a few VIP clients to define the missing patterns needed to launch Edge Commerce on EDS. Additionally, the Atama Luma Bridge components can be deprecated gracefully, as official Adobe Commerce Dropins have full coverage.
What is Luma Bridge
Luma Bridge is a set of components that make it easy to use Adobe Commerce with Edge Delivery Services. The Luma Theme is the most popular official frontend theme for Adobe Commerce, dating back to the Magneto days. However, it relies on PHP session management because it is headful, whereas EDS is headless. As its name implies, Luma-Bridge bridges the gap between the old and new, allowing you to use headful and headless frontends together.
Why did we write it?
We wrote Luma Bridge so customers can launch Adobe Commerce sites on EDS before Adobe completes its new headless commerce frontend. To support EDS, Adobe Commerce is developing a new micro-frontend called Commerce Dropins. Eventually, it will provide a complete frontend experience. However, it is a work in progress. As of this writing, only a handful of components are available.
What is the value
EDS brings a new level of performance to AEM. With Luma Bridge, commerce customers can get the value of EDS on key pages today as Adobe completes Commerce drop-ins. Moreover, we have been working closely with Adobe to make the Bridge future-friendly, so as Adobe releases more Commerce Drop-Ins, bridge components can be gracefully depreciated.
What does it do
The Adobe Commerce Luma theme relies on PHP session management because it is headful, whereas Adobe Commerce headless sites use GraphQL Bearer tokens. As its name implies, Luma-Bridge bridges the gap between the two session technologies, allowing you to use both the headful and headless frontends together. Bridge has two parts: an Adobe Commerce module that handles token handling and cart IDs and the boilerplate code for a mini-cart that allows EDS pages to interact with the Adobe Commerce Luma Frontend. It provides critical use cases, such as merge carts, logged-in vs. anonymous carts, session expiration, and the ability to open multiple tabs simultaneously.