SmallCommerce — Digital Commerce Platform for Latin America’s Informal Economy

🔗 smallcommerce.io – This marketing website is coming soon.

Hello and welcome to the SmallCommerce project 👋! It's great to have you. This initiative was created for entrepreneurs whose way of doing business doesn’t fit into traditional e-commerce platforms. It adapts to the informal economic practices already used across Latin America. Rather than forcing entrepreneurs to change how they operate, this project aims to adapt technology to the informal business practices common throughout Latin America.

❓Why this project exists

After nearly a decade working in e-commerce and conversational systems, it remains clear that existing platforms fail to address the realities of Latin America’s informal economy. This isn’t a theoretical problem, it’s one experienced firsthand by family members, friends, and myself while operating informal businesses. SmallCommerce was created to close this gap by offering a digital commerce platform that deeply integrates with existing economic practices, allowing entrepreneurs to grow and reach more customers without changing how they already work.

💻 What this project uses for technology

I'm talking here only about the client-side, which is the repository I opened.

• Angular: A framework for building scalable web apps. We use Angular for the two projects (partner-dashboard & micro-storefront).

🙋‍♀️ How you can get involved

The client-side of SmallCommerce is an open community for all types and levels of developers, designers, and ninjas. If you want to get involved or see something you want to build (or even a bug fix), head over to the Contributing document for more information.

Please read the branching strategy in Contributing. This is important if you want to contribute!

💬 Communication

To keep things organized, I've created a Slack workspace for discussions on the project. You can see and join it here. Or email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or need assistance.

📞 Bi-Weekly update post.

I also have a bi-weekly update post at 8pm PST on Slack.

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📦 Installation and Setup

1. Install Node.js Check the website for information on how to install.
2. Install Npm Check the website for information on how to install.
3. Clone the project. Git clone the project to somewhere you want to work on your local machine.
4. Run npm install in the root directory. This will install all the dependencies needed to run the project.
5. Create environments folder within src folder and place the environment.ts.example file there. Rename the file to environment.ts and fill in the required information.
6. Setup is complete 🎉!

🗺 Getting around / project structure

SmallCommerce client is divided into 3 (currently) main artifacts:

• partner-dashboard: This is where the Partner (Owner/Merchants as called in other platforms) set up their store.
• micro-storefront: This package provides the UI/front-end for the customers (Partner's buyers).
• shared-core: Here we have share components/modules that are going to be used by the dashboard and the storefront projects.

🏃🏿‍♂️ Running the project

This project was generated using Angular CLI version 21.0.5.

Development server

To start a local development server, run:

ng serve partner-dashboard

Once the server is running, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:4200/. The application will automatically reload whenever you modify any of the source files.

Code scaffolding

Angular CLI includes powerful code scaffolding tools. To generate a new component, run:

ng generate component component-name

For a complete list of available schematics (such as components, directives, or pipes), run:

ng generate --help

Setup Environments

Create a environments folder within the src folder and place the environment.ts.example file within it.

Building

To build the project run:

ng build

This will compile your project and store the build artifacts in the dist/ directory. By default, the production build optimizes your application for performance and speed.

Running unit tests

To execute unit tests with the Vitest test runner, use the following command:

npm run test:partner || npm run test:micro -->"for the micro-storefront project"

Additional Resources

For more information on using the Angular CLI, including detailed command references, visit the Angular CLI Overview and Command Reference page.

Important note

Please read the Guidelines document for more information. Please read the Module-Architecture document for more information.

Both documents are intended to be 1) provided to the LLMs and give more context at the moment of code implementation and 2) to help the community understand the project better.