Build and Deploy a Full-Featured Ecommerce Site with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Prisma, and More

Are you looking to build a modern, full-stack ecommerce website using the latest web development technologies? In this expert-level guide, I‘ll show you how to create an online store similar to Amazon by combining several powerful tools and frameworks.

We‘ll use Next.js 13.4, the popular React framework, for building the frontend and backend. Tailwind CSS and the DaisyUI component library will allow us to quickly create an attractive, responsive UI. On the backend, we‘ll leverage Prisma to interact with a MongoDB database, and deploy our site to Vercel for easy hosting.

By the end of this tutorial, you‘ll have a fully functional ecommerce site with product pages, a shopping cart, user authentication, and more. Let‘s get started!

The Tech Stack

Here‘s an overview of the key technologies we‘ll be using:

• Next.js 13.4: A powerful React framework that enables server-side rendering, API routes, and more. The latest version adds support for server actions, which allow you to define API endpoints directly inside your React components.

• Tailwind CSS: A utility-first CSS framework that makes it easy to build custom designs without leaving your HTML.

• DaisyUI: A free, open-source component library built with Tailwind CSS. It provides a set of pre-built, customizable UI elements that we can drop into our site.

• Prisma: A modern database toolkit that simplifies database access and management. We‘ll use Prisma Client to query our database and Prisma Migrate to set up the schema.

• MongoDB: A popular NoSQL database known for its flexibility and scalability. We‘ll use MongoDB Atlas to host our database in the cloud.

• Next-Auth: A complete authentication solution for Next.js applications. It supports multiple authentication providers, including Google, which we‘ll use in this tutorial.

• Vercel: A cloud platform for static sites and serverless functions. We‘ll use Vercel to deploy our Next.js application with just a few clicks.

By combining these technologies, we can build a modern, full-featured ecommerce site without getting bogged down in configuration or infrastructure. Let‘s take a closer look at some of the key features we‘ll implement.

Building Product Pages with Next.js Server Actions

One of the key features of any ecommerce site is the ability to browse and purchase products. With Next.js 13.4, we can use server actions to streamline this process.

Server actions allow us to define API routes directly inside our React components using a server$ prefix. For example, here‘s how we might define an action to retrieve a list of products from the database:

import { prisma } from ‘@/lib/prisma‘;

export async function fetchProducts() {
  const products = await prisma.product.findMany();
  return products;
}

export default async function ProductsPage() {
  const products = await fetchProducts();
  // render products...
}

By calling fetchProducts inside our ProductsPage component, Next.js will automatically invoke the function on the server and return the result. This allows us to keep our frontend lean and performant while still providing dynamic data.

We can also use server actions to implement features like adding items to the shopping cart or processing orders. By doing all the heavy lifting on the backend, we can create a seamless user experience without compromising on performance or security.

Simplifying Database Management with Prisma

Another key aspect of any ecommerce site is the ability to manage product inventory, user accounts, and orders. This is where Prisma comes in.

Prisma is a modern database toolkit that provides a type-safe API for querying and mutating your database. It supports multiple databases, including MongoDB, which we‘ll be using in this tutorial.

To get started with Prisma, we first need to define our database schema using Prisma‘s schema language. Here‘s a simplified example:

datasource db {
  provider = "mongodb"
  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

model Product {
  id          String  @id @default(auto()) @map("_id") @db.ObjectId
  name        String
  description String
  price       Float
  image       String
  // ...
}

model User {
  id       String  @id @default(auto()) @map("_id") @db.ObjectId 
  email    String  @unique
  password String
  // ...  
}

model Order {
  id        String   @id @default(auto()) @map("_id") @db.ObjectId
  user      User     @relation(fields: [userId], references: [id])
  userId    String   @db.ObjectId
  products  Product[]
  total     Float
  // ...
}

With this schema in place, Prisma will generate a type-safe client that we can use to query our database. For example, here‘s how we might fetch a list of products:

import { PrismaClient } from ‘@prisma/client‘

const prisma = new PrismaClient()

async function main() {
  const products = await prisma.product.findMany()
  console.log(products)
}

main()

Prisma also provides a powerful set of tools for migrating and seeding your database. With Prisma Migrate, we can define our schema changes in code and apply them to our database with a single command. And with Prisma‘s seeding feature, we can easily populate our database with test data during development.

Implementing User Authentication with Next-Auth

User authentication and management is never an easy part in developing any online app. With Next-Auth and its Prisma adapter, adding secure, fully-featured authentication to our ecommerce site is incredibly simple.

First, we need to set up our authentication providers. For this tutorial, we‘ll use Google OAuth, but Next-Auth supports a wide range of providers, including Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub.

Next, we create a [...nextauth].ts file inside our pages/api/auth directory:

import NextAuth from ‘next-auth‘
import GoogleProvider from ‘next-auth/providers/google‘
import { PrismaAdapter } from ‘@next-auth/prisma-adapter‘
import { PrismaClient } from ‘@prisma/client‘

const prisma = new PrismaClient()

export default NextAuth({
  adapter: PrismaAdapter(prisma),
  providers: [
    GoogleProvider({
      clientId: process.env.GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID,
      clientSecret: process.env.GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET,
    }),
  ],
})

Here, we‘ve configured Next-Auth to use the Prisma adapter and the Google authentication provider. We‘ve also passed in our Google OAuth credentials via environment variables.

With this setup, Next-Auth will automatically create database tables to store user accounts and sessions. It also provides a set of built-in APIs for common authentication tasks, like logging in, logging out, and checking if a user is authenticated.

To protect certain pages or API routes, we can use Next-Auth‘s getSession function:

import { getSession } from ‘next-auth/react‘

export default async (req, res) => {
  const session = await getSession({ req })

  if (!session) {
    res.status(401).json({ error: ‘Unauthorized‘ })
    return
  }

  // session is available, user is authenticated
}

By adding this check to our API routes, we can ensure that only authenticated users can access sensitive data or perform certain actions.

Creating Interactive UI Components with DaisyUI and Tailwind CSS

While the backend functionality is crucial for an e-commerce site, the frontend is equally important to provide a seamless and visually appealing user experience. With Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI, we can rapidly build beautiful, responsive UI components without writing a lot of custom CSS.

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that provides a set of pre-defined classes for common styles like spacing, colors, and typography. Instead of writing CSS rules, we simply apply these classes to our HTML elements:

<button class="bg-blue-500 hover:bg-blue-700 text-white font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded">
  Buy Now
</button>

While Tailwind CSS provides the building blocks, DaisyUI offers a collection of ready-to-use, customizable components built on top of Tailwind. This includes things like buttons, cards, modals, and more.

For example, here‘s how we might create a product card using DaisyUI:

<div class="card card-compact w-96 bg-base-100 shadow-xl">
  <figure><img src="https://api.lorem.space/image/shoes?w=400&h=225" alt="Shoes" /></figure>
  <div class="card-body">
    <h2 class="card-title">Shoes!</h2>
    <p>If a dog chews shoes whose shoes does he choose?</p>
    <div class="card-actions justify-end">
      <button class="btn btn-primary">Buy Now</button>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

By leveraging these pre-built components, we can focus on building the unique features of our ecommerce site, rather than reinventing the wheel for every UI element.

Streamlining Deployment with Vercel

Once our ecommerce site is built, we need a way to deploy it to the web. This is where Vercel comes in.

Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and serverless functions, with built-in support for Next.js. Deploying a Next.js application to Vercel is as simple as connecting your GitHub repository and clicking "Deploy".

But Vercel offers more than just easy deployment. It also provides a global CDN, automatic SSL, and support for custom domains out of the box. Plus, with Vercel‘s GitHub integration, we can set up continuous deployment to automatically publish changes whenever we push to our repository.

Vercel also supports environment variables, which allow us to securely store sensitive information (like our database connection string) and access it in our application code.

Conclusion

Building a full-featured ecommerce site is no small feat, but by leveraging the right tools and frameworks, we can streamline the process significantly.

By using Next.js for our frontend and backend, Prisma for our database, Next-Auth for authentication, Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI for our UI, and Vercel for deployment, we can create a performant, scalable, and maintainable application without getting bogged down in the details.

I hope this guide has given you a solid foundation for building your own ecommerce site. Remember, the key is to focus on your unique value proposition and user experience, while leveraging proven tools and best practices to handle the heavy lifting.

Now go forth and build something amazing!