System Architecture
The B2B Suite is a collection of loosely coupled, mostly uniform components packaged with a small example plugin and a common library.
Component layering
A single component with all layers and the maximum of allowed dependencies looks like this:
The responsibilities from bottom to top:
| Layer | Description |
|---|---|
| Shop-Bridge | Bridges the broad Shopware interfaces to the specific framework requirements
|
| Framework | Contains the B2B specific Domain Requirements
|
| REST-API | REST access to the services |
| Frontend | Controller as a service for frontend access |
| B2B plugin | Storefront access to the services |
Please notice: Apart from the framework, all other layers and dependencies are optional.
Component dependencies
At the time of this writing, there were 39 different components, all built with the same structure. We sorted these components into four different complexes:
Common - The one exception
There is a small library of shared functionality. It contains a few commonly used technical implementations shared between most components like exception classes, repository helpers, a dependency manager, or a REST-API router.
User management
The user management is based on the StoreFrontAuthentication component and then provides Contact and Debtor entities which have Addresses and Roles. These entities are mostly informational and CRUD based. Other parts of the system only depend on the StoreFrontAuthentication component but not the specific implementations as Debtor or Contact.
ACL
The acl implementation is connected to most other entities provided by the B2B Suite.
Order and contingent management
ContingentGroupss are connected to Debtors and can have acl settings based on Roles or Contacts. Orders are personalized through the StoreFrontAuthentication.
The whole picture
Most dependencies are directly derived from requirements. So, the dependency flow of the components should follow the basic business needs. There are a few exceptions, mainly the M:N assignment components, each representing a reset in complexity where a complex feature resolves itself into a context object for another use case. You can think of it like that.
- A Debtor can be created and updated through a service => The debtor is an entity
- A Debtor may be an entity connected to many workflows by its id => The Debtor is just the context
So, for the sake of completeness, this is the whole picture:
Everything you should get from that is that there is a left to right propagation of dependencies. The components on the left side can be useful entirely without the components on the right side.
