What’s new in Magento 2.3?

During its Imagine 2018 conference in Las Vegas, Magento announced its intentions for the upcoming Magento 2.3 release that will be finished at the end of this year. Like every major release, there are remarkable exciting enhancements that are poised to produce new opportunities for our clients to market to their end-clients, as well as back-end capabilities.

Magento 2.3 introduced following list of features

1. PWA (Progressive Web Application) Studio

   PWA term invented by Google, that defines websites or web applications that enable modern web-technologies in order to behave like the native mobile application. To support progressive web application Magento released PWA Studio.

   Progressive web application is from which developer can develop a progressive web app on Magento platform.

2. Asynchronous Web APIs

   Generally, the client makes the request to a web service and wait for return response, asynchronous web API’s behave differently than that.

   For example: Client’s needs to update the inventory across 1,000 products and is trying to push these changes to the Magento Inventory API. Because the size of the payload, Magento may take a time to process the response and the client will be waiting for some amount of time for a response.

   Asynchronous web API’s provides the ability to make the request without waiting for a response from the server.

3. Cache Management ACL

   Magento cache management ACL features provide control over which user can both see and flush the Magento cache. For example, Magento 2.3 provides that only super admin can remove Magento cache.

4. Declarative Schema

   In Magento developer need to create a series of SQL script in order to insert, update or delete records in the database table, and this script will be executed when the Magento module version is changed. Magento provides 5 different types of script listed below,

   • InstallData & InstallSchema: This will be executed with the empty database
   • UpgradeData & UpgradeSchema: This will be modify existing database schema or add records in the database table.
   • Recurring Scripts: This will be executed every time when you install or upgrade Magento.

   Magento 2.3 allows the developer to define the declarative schema in XML format, Magento will then subsequently convert the XML schema file into SQL statement and then execute accordingly.

5. GraphQL (Query Language)

   GraphQL is query language used for APIs. With the introduced of PWA (Progressive Web Application), there is a requirement to get a smaller amount of data and make fewer API requests. GraphQL makes this possible by allowing the requestor to request a limited subset of attributes to be returned about an entity (significantly smaller responses) and allows you to chain requests (smaller number of requests).GraphQL has also an ability to join data in a single request.

   We want product description by supplying the SKU of the product. In traditional REST API request, we will make the call to an endpoint. For example, /store/products/{SKU} and it will return all the information’s associated with SKU, now we required to filter return response to get only description. In the GraphQL request, we will define only the information that we want to be returned by request.

   That means in return response of GraphQL we don’t need to process to get the description as like in traditional REST API. For example

   { product(sku : 'DR0117'){ description } }

   {
   product(sku : 'DR0117'){ description } }

6. Google reCAPTCHA

   It is more important now a day to secure your website from hackers and other harms. Magento 2.3 introduced Google reCAPTCHA feature. Google reCAPTCHA tool will now be native. Below the list of pages that can get the additional security level:

   • Both Admin & User Login pages
   • Registration Page
   • Contact form
   • Forgot Password Page

7. MSI (Multi Source Inventory)

   Magento MSI allows the merchant to define multiple stock location in the platform for Magento Development and subsequently link channels. This will also allow merchants to natively manage inventory via multiple sources. This would include the shipping of objects and tracking of stock levels from various warehouses, as well as the record within retail stores to support “ship from store” and “pick up in store”.

   With MSI features introduced in Magento 2.3 merchant will handle all inventory without any third party extensions or platforms.

8. 2FA (Two Factor Authentication)

   One of the most important parts of any system is the security. To protect the system against malicious users (hacker) that have obtained a password, Magento is implementing two-factor authentication.

   This extra security layer will require a user to prove that they have access rights of the system by sending a security code to their phone or email.

   2FA support below authentication methods,

   • Google Authenticator
   • Duo Security
   • Authy

9. Message Queue

   The message queue is an asynchronous communications protocol, that mean’s sender doesn’t require to immediate response to continuing processing. The message queue is designed to optimize the system by providing a task queue need to complete.

   For Example, When system connect to ERP software, auto-import or export. Note that it is important to establish a message queue before installing Magento. Below is a list of the process you need to set-up,

   • Install RabbitMQ
   • Install Magento
   • Connect RabbitMQ to Magento

10. Page Builder

    Magento provides page building functionality with the capability of building dynamic CMS pages with responsive capabilities so customers don’t need to go to development for basic design pages. Some other highlights would be

    • PHP 7.2 Support will be added
    • Tiny MCE will be renewed to version 4
    • Elastic Search 5 support will be added
    • Magento Import/Export process will be enhanced