Solidus

Built with Ruby on Rails and forked from Spree, Solidus is a free, open source e-commerce platform run since then as a community project. It is aimed at merchants who want complete control of a store rather than the boundaries a hosted service draws for them.

The platform is not one monolith but a set of gems installed together. Requiring the top-level gem pulls in core models, mailers and classes, the admin backend, the RESTful API and sample data. A store can just as easily take only the core and pair it with a custom storefront, admin interface and API of its own.

A local install follows an ordinary Rails workflow.

• Prerequisites: ImageMagick has to be present for Paperclip before anything else is installed.
• Generator: the install generator runs migrations and loads seed and sample data, each of which can be turned off with a flag.
• Running: the Rails server serves the storefront on port 3000, with the admin area under its own path.
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB are supported by exporting a database variable before setup.
• Docker: a compose file brings up a development environment, with the Ruby and Rails versions configurable.

Repository advice includes turning off asset debugging so development mode stops loading every stylesheet separately, and a caution that Turbolinks in the admin can break extensions. The BSD licensed code is directed by Nebulab, its main contributor, with funding from partners and backers on Open Collective. A live demo is available for anyone who wants to click around before installing.