Introduction

BroadleafCommerce is an e-commerce framework written entirely in Java and leveraging the Spring framework. It is targeted at facilitating the development of enterprise-class, commerce-driven sites by providing a robust data model, services and specialized tooling that take care of most of the "heavy lifting" work. To accomplish this goal, we have developed our platform based on the key feature sets required by world-class online retailers - and we're committed to continually expanding our feature offering. We've also taken extra steps to guarantee interoperability with today's enterprise by utilizing standards wherever possible and incorporating best-of-breed, open-source software libraries.

See overview and features of Broadleaf at www.broadleafcommerce.com

Editions

Broadleaf has a number of editions available commercially including a Marketplace Edition, B2B Edition, B2C Edition, and Multi-Teant Edition. Each of these are described on the Editions Page of the Broadleaf website.

Getting Started

Check out our Getting Started guide to quickly kick off your Broadleaf-enabled website.

License

Broadleaf Commerce core is released under a dual license format. It may be used under the terms of the Fair Use License 1.0 (http://license.broadleafcommerce.org/fair_use_license-1.0.txt) unless the restrictions on use therein are violated and require payment to Broadleaf, in which case the Broadleaf End User License Agreement (EULA), Version 1.1 (http://license.broadleafcommerce.org/commercial_license-1.1.txt) shall apply. Alternatively, the Commercial License may be replaced with a mutually agreed upon license between you and Broadleaf Commerce.

Support

We also offer various levels of enterprise support licenses. Please contact us for information.

Key Features and Technologies

Spring Framework

Spring is the enterprise Java platform on which BroadleafCommerce is based. It provides numerous features, including dependency injection and transaction control.

Security

Spring Security provides a robust security framework for controlling authentication and authorization at both the code and page level and is utilized by BroadleafCommerce for access control.

Persistence

JPA and Hibernate represent the BroadleafCommerce ORM infrastructure for controlling persistence of our rich domain model.

Search

Flexible domain search capabilities in BroadleafCommerce are provided through integration with Solr.

Task Scheduling

Scheduling of repetitive tasks in BroadleafCommerce is offered through the Quartz job scheduling system.

Email

Email support is provided throughout the BroadleafCommerce framework in either synchronous or asynchronous (JMS) modes. Email presentation customization is achieved via Thymeleaf templates.

Modular Design

Important e-commerce touchpoints are embodied in the concept of BroadleafCommerce "Modules". A module can provide interaction with a credit card processor, or even a shipping provider. Any number of custom modules may be developed and utilized with BroadleafCommerce.

Configurable Workflows

Key areas in the e-commerce lifecycle are represented as configurable workflows. Implementors have full control over the keys steps in pricing and checkout, allowing manipulation of module ordering, overriding existing module behavior and custom module execution. Composite workflows are also supported to achieve more exotic, nested behavior.

Extendible Design

BroadleafCommerce is designed from the ground-up with extensibility in mind. Almost every aspect of BroadleafCommerce can be overridden, added to or otherwise modified to enhance or change the default behavior to best fit your needs. This includes all of our services, data access objects and entities. Please refer to the extensibility section of our documentation.

Configuration Merging

As an extra bonus to our extensibility model, we offer a custom merge facility for Spring configuration files. We minimize the BroadleafCommerce configuration semantics that an implementer must be aware of, allowing our users to focus on their own configuration particulars. BroadleafCommerce will intelligently merge its own configuration information with that provided by the implementer at runtime.

Presentation Layer Support

BroadleafCommerce also includes a number of pre-written Spring MVC controllers that help to speed development of the presentation layer of your own BroadleafCommerce-driven site.

QOS

BroadleafCommerce also provides quality of service monitoring for modules (both custom and default modules) and provides support for several QOS handlers out-of-the-box: logging and email. Additional, custom QOS handlers may be added through our open API.

Promotion System

BroadleafCommerce includes a highly-configurable system for including your pricing promotions. We provide several standard levels at which promotions may be applied: Order level, Order Item level and Fulfillment Group level. In addition, your promotion business rules are represented in a flexible and standardized way using the MVEL expression language.

PCI Considerations

We have taken measures in the construction and design of BroadleafCommerce to help you achieve PCI compliance, should you decide to store and use sensitive customer financial account information. Payment account information is referenced separately, allowing you to segregate confidential data onto a separate, secure database platform. API methods have been added to allow inclusion of any PCI compliant encryption scheme. Also, verbose logging is included to track payment interaction history.

Admin Platform

BroadleafCommerce includes a wholely extendible administrative application built with Spring MVC. The admin application also provides an easy-to-use interface for catalog, order and customer functions and provides a robust, rule-driven environment for creating and managing discount promotions.

Admin Customization

BroadleafCommerce provides a robust set of admin presentation annotations that allow configuration of domain class display and persistence semantics without touching any admin code. This provides an easy-to-consume approach for introducing entity extensions and additional fields into the admin forms so that your business users can immediately start to benefit. We also provide a full annotation or xml-based approach for overriding the admin config declared inside BroadleafCommerce so that you can have an impact on our defaults. And for more advanced customizations, our admin platform is based on Spring MVC, so your Spring knowledge will translate here as well when it comes to adding additional controllers, and the like.

Content Management

BroadleafCommerce includes a robust content management system for creating and managing static pages and content. We also include a powerful content targeting feature that allows business users to dynamically drive the most appropriate content to users.

We also offer various levels of enterprise support licenses. Please contact us for information.