Digital marketplace (NextJs Monolith):

• Fullstack approach, monolith NextJS app with combined Express, NextJs, Payload CMS backends in only 1 server or 1 serverless instance (AWS Lambda or GCP Function).
• tRPC (Typescript Remote Procedure Call) to ensure end-to-end type-safty.
• Next14, Tailwind, Shadcn UI,Lucide react, Zustand LocalStorage
• Other techstacks: Payload CMS with Mongo DB abstraction.
• Reference Payload starting templates

Getting Started

• Install Shadcn UI with npx shadcn-ui@latest init
• Choose the color theme that you want to use, and copy the theme to src/app/globals.css

Express Middleware for NextJs

• We are using Express as a middleware for separating traffics between customer path (/) with admin dashboard path (/sell) for sellers.
• Using cross-env and nodemon in dev mode will automatically restart the express server on file changes.
• We also need to add a few custom decorators in tsconfig.server.json to make Express works:

{
  "extends": "./tsconfig.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "module": "CommonJS",
    "outDir": "dist",
    "noEmit": false,
    "jsx": "react"
  },
  "include": ["src/server.ts", "src/payload.config.ts"]
}

• Express will be the first point-of-entry for both rendering and TRPC api requests.

Payload Configuration (MongoDB, alternative: Postgres)

• Create payload.config.ts and export a default config.
• For editor in payload config, we can choose SlateJs[https://www.slatejs.org/] or Lexical[https://lexical.dev/].
• Install payload adapters for MongoDb (alternative: Postgres), and webpack bundler for our Express server:

npm i @payloadcms/richtext-slate @payloadcms/bundler-webpack @payloadcms
/db-mongodb --save

• For viewing payload Admin dashboard, please see http://localhost:3000/sell
• Important note: You should not have any users document in your database, in order to be redirected to http://localhost:3000/sell/create-first-user. See more here

Zod Validation with react-hook-form

• Use Zod validation schema for both client-side and server-side
• Integrate Zod validators with @hookform/resolvers/zod. See here

TRPC and tanstack/react-query

• Important: Whenever a new collection is created, make sure to add it in payload.config.ts and also run npm run generate:types
• Provides both FE and BE typesafe APIs with @trpc/server and @trpc/client. See here
• Create a Providers wrapper component, which will provide the trpc context to your app. Providers and Providers in layout.tsx

<trpc.Provider client={trpcClient} queryClient={queryClient}>
  <QueryClientProvider client={queryClient}>{children}</QueryClientProvider>
</trpc.Provider>

• At this point of time, TRPC v11 is still in beta, and TRPC v10 can only support tanstack/react-query v4.36.1. See here

MongoDB Collections

• For users collection, we have 3 types of users: admin, buyer and seller. See here
• Plug the users collection in your payload config. See here

Email Signup Confirmation

• This project uses resend for email confirmation. See resend SMTP docs
• Alternatives are AWS SES, Google Mail (500 emails limit), Mailchimp. Make sure to use the email providers, which our confirmation emails would not be landed in Spam folder.
• Note: we must add DNS records to prove our domain, so resend can work. See here

Application Architecture

• 
• 

Stripe Checkout

• Go to Stripe account, activate Test Mode, and select Developers tab.
• Use this credit card number for testing: 4242 4242 4242 4242. Other details can be anything.
• 
• 
• We will keep polling /thank-you page until order is set with isPaid = true.
• 
• Create Stripe webhook in Stripe dashboard, under Developer mode. Update environment variable STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET.
• 

Email templates

• @react-email/components
• React Email templates with responsive design here.
• Apple Email Receipt Example
• Using @react-email/components, we can render our email templates in React into a React component.

export const ReceiptEmailHtml = (props: ReceiptEmailProps) =>
  render(<ReceiptEmail {...props} />, {
    pretty: true,
  });

Dockerize the project

• Build the docker image and run with external port of 8080, and internal port of 3000
• Make sure to ignore node_modules in .dockerignore to avoid platform issues between x86-64 and arm64
• Railway could build the app with or without Docker. But with Docker, we need to specify environment variables that we pass from Railway app to Docker container.

docker build -t next-marketplace .
docker ps
docker run -dp 8080:3000 next-marketplace

  ARG NEXT_PUBLIC_SERVER_URL
  ARG PAYLOAD_SECRET
  ARG MONGODB_URL
  ARG TRANSACTION_FEE_PRICE_ID
  ARG STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
  ARG STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET
  ARG RESEND_API_KEY

Railway app Deployments

• Using railway app

const nextConfig = {
  images: {
    domains: ["nextmarket.up.railway.app", "localhost"],
  },
};

AWS EC2 Deployment

• With AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, Elastic Beanstalk and EC2
• Using a EC2 instance saving plan, and deploy ECS Cluster with EC2 launch type. And use an Elastic Ip Address would save lots of cost over using ALB.
• Example of creating ECS deployment with EC2 launch type
• Routing from Route53 to EC2 instance

ECS Fargate deployment with CDK (tested and working)

• Follow the instructions here: ECS Fargate deployment with CDK
• Dockerfile will require to have FROM --platform=linux/amd64
• Although this is working. The cost for Application Load Balancer would be around 30$ a month
• The cost for Fargate is around 3 times more than EC2 instance, approximately 200-300$ a year for 1 VCPU and 1GB memory.

Github Actions Deployment to AWS EC2 with Docker (Cheaper option)

• Avoid costly build with AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodePipeline. Github workflow is free.
• Using Route 53 and Cloudfront with EC2 (public IP Address) origin to distribute dynamic website traffic.
• 
• 
• Cost: EC2 (t2.micro) 60-100$/year, a public IP (43$ a year), Route 53 and Cloudfront cost.
• Video Tutorial

Hostinger Deployment (Cheapest)

• Using Docker with Hostinger
• It is better to automate the build from Github Actions. Follow similar Video Tutorial

S3 storage for medi and product_files collections

• Using Payload Cloud Storage Plugin
• List of S3 endpoints per region
• Installations:

npm i @payloadcms/plugin-cloud-storage @aws-sdk/client-s3 @aws-sdk/lib-storage aws-crt

Optimizations

• (Optional) Add resolution to package.json to improve build time with copyfiles.
• (Optional) Declare main entry to application in package.json as main: dist/server.js
• (Important) Make sure to includes all local and production domains inside next.config.mjs:

TODO

• Deploy this NextApp in AWS Lambda (may not be possible)
• Deploy this NextApp in AWS EKS
• Fix Email Receipt
• Fix Mobile View Cart