You’re a Sitecore developer and want to know how to implement the website(s) using Sitecore Experience Accelerator 1.7 Update 1 (aka SXA 1.7.1) on Sitecore Experience Platform 9 Update 2 (aka Sitecore XP 9.0.2) + Sitecore Experience Commerce 9 Update 2 (aka Sitecore XC 9.0.2) and following Helix principles.

If that is the case, you should set up Sitecore demo – Habitat Home Commerce – on your machine so that you’re able to play around with the Sitecore solution example and then learn something.

Personally, I’ve wanted to deal with the case: how to set up multi-instance Sitecore XC 9.0.2 so that I’m able to play with the vanilla XC 9.0.2 instance and this demo of XC 9.0.2 as well on my own machine.

Setup Preresiquites

• Windows 10
• Visual Studio 2017 (version 15.7 or later)
  • Note: Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 and later supports migrating a project from the packages.config management format to the PackageReference format, click here to learn more about it
• Sitecore Experience Commerce 9.0 Update 2
• Habitat Home Platform

Step-by-step Guide

1. install a fresh Sitecore Commerce 9.0 Update 2
   • Note 1: Sitecore instance name should be habitathome.local and certificate for the Sitecore Commerce Engine should be issued to habitathome.local as well in this installation guide
   • Note 2: you should consider to give this installation guide a shot when you have an existing instance of XC 9.0.X (X = 0, 1, 2) on your machine so that you don’t have to uninstall it before setting up this demo
2. deploy Habitat Home Platform to Sitecore instance habitathome.local
   • Note 1: we don’t need to install the following Sitecore modules in this installation guide because they’re installed in Step 1
     • Sitecore Powershell Extensions 4.7.2
     • Sitecore Experience Accelerator 1.7.1
   • Note 2: should run quick-deploy gulp task rather than default one
     • 
3. download or clone the git repo from Habitat Home Commerce 9.0.2.2
4. restore all Node.js modules
   • run command line as Administrator
   • change directory to Habitat Home Commerce directory
   • execute npm install
   • 
5. Note: I don’t want to use the default settings so I need to adjust the appropriate values in the following files:
   • \gulp-config.js
     • 
   • \publishsettings.targets
     • 
   • \src\Project\HabitatHome\website\App_Config\Include\Project\z.HabitatHome.Commerce.Website.DevSettings.config
     • 
   • \deploy-commerce-engine.ps1
     • 
   • \src\Project\HabitatHome\engine\wwwroot\bootstrap\Global.json
     • 
   • \src\Project\HabitatHome\engine\wwwroot\data\Environments\Plugin.SQL.PolicySet-1.0.0.json
     • 
6. Note: if you use the custom Service Ports rather than the default ones, you will have to correct them in various places
   • open Visual Studio
   • correct all the Service Ports one by one 😀
   • find all localhost: in the entire solution
   • 
   • find all //{0}: in the entire solution
   • 
   • find all SslPort in the entire solution
   • 
7. open \HabitatHome.Commerce.sln with Visual Studio 2017
8. deploy the solution
   • open Task Runner Explorer on View -> Other Window -> Task Runner Explorer
   • 
   • choose Solution ‘HabitatHome.Commerce’ from list, then click refresh button
   • from task list, double click on initial task to run it
   • 
   • Note: for Visual Studio 2017 on your own machine, you might have to run gulp tasks via Command Prompt (run as Administrator)
9. hopefully everything runs well and then you would see something like this
   • 
10. deploy the engine
    • launch PowerShell as an administrator
    • change directory to Habitat Home Commerce directory
    • execute .\deploy-commerce-engine.ps1 -Boostrap -Initialize
    • 
    • hopefully everything runs well and then you would see something like this
    • 
11. open a browser and then navigate to https://habitathome.local, you would see something like this after adding some products to cart successfully
    • 

Note: some known issues

1. Visual Studio’s Task Runner: SyntaxError: Unexpected token
   • 
   • my suggestion: have a look at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45580456/visual-studio-task-runner-error-with-es6 in order to overcome the issue
2. Invoke-RestMethod: The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error
   • 
   • open the log file you would see something like this

   • ERROR Connection id “”0HLE4OSSCC354″”, Request id “”0HLE4OSSCC354:00000001″”: An unhandled exception was thrown by the application.Microsoft.AspNetCore.Antiforgery.AntiforgeryValidationException: The required antiforgery cookie “.AspNetCore.Antiforgery.cf4m-F-R1lY” is not present.

   • my suggestion: ensure the engine suffix correct in deploy-commerce-engine.ps1 and then perform Step 10 again
3. Cleaning Environments:  HTTP Error 502.5
   • 
   • open Windows Event Viewer, you should see something like this
   • 
   • my suggestions: probably ASP.NET Core module was not installed correctly on your machine, you should try to install the latest version of .NET Core 2.0 (Runtime) and then perform Step 10 again
4. Empty strings are not allowed. Parameter name: value
   • 
   • my suggestion:
     • log into https://habitathome.local/sitecore
     • hit Refresh Commerce Cache in the COMMERCE tab of Content Editor
     • 
     • access /sitecore/Commerce/Commerce Control Panel/Storefront Settings/Storefronts/HabitatHome/Catalog Configuration
     • update Catalog to Habitat Master then save
     • 
5. Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes
   • 
   • my suggestion:
     • log into https://habitathome.local/sitecore
     • make sure that Solr is running properly by rebuilding the search indexes in the Sitecore client (Control Panel => Indexing Manager) if not yet
       • select the checkbox sitecore_master_index and then click Rebuild button
     • hit Refresh Commerce Cache in the COMMERCE tab of Content Editor
     • 

Got issues?

Please send your issues (with screenshots if possible) to viet.hoang.sitecore@gmail.com so that I have a chance to understand your problem and be able to suggest the solution.

Happy Sitecore Demo Installation!