WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

jeremy · 10-03-2016, 03:42 PM

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Walmart probably isn’t the first company that comes to mind when you think about open-source software (or the second or third, really), but WalmartLabs, Walmart’s innovation-focused tech division, has already launched a number of open-source projects into the wild. The most interesting of these so far was OneOps, its DevOps platform, but today it is launching a similarly ambitious project.

Over the course of the last year, Walmart.com — a site that handles 80 million monthly visitors and offers 15 million items for sale — migrated to React and Node.js. In the process of this transition, the WalmartLabs team built Electrode, a React-based application platform to power Walmart.com. It’s now open sourcing this platform.

Electrode provides developers with boilerplate code to build universal React apps that consist of a number of standalone modules that developers can choose to add more functionality to their Node apps. These include a tool for managing the configuration of Node.js apps, for example, as well as a React component that helps you render above-the-fold content faster.

“We consume and contribute tons of open source, so it’s important for us to give back whenever possible,” Grigoryan said. “Electrode has improved performance of our apps and increased developer productivity, among other things. By open sourcing Electrode, we’re encouraging the OS community to help make it better — for us, and other developers who will use it.”

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--jeremy