WordPress.org

Description

Decouple your WooCommerce store with ease with our developer friendly REST API extension.

CoCart is a customizable, open-source REST API solution built for WooCommerce that is ready to decouple away from WordPress, allowing you to design and build without limitations imposed by a WordPress theme that is harder to modify and optimize. Our REST API handles all the server side actions so it can be utilized in faster and familiar frameworks that you prefer.

Why WooCommerce?

WooCommerce provides a flexible, and efficient way to build cutting-edge stores with WordPress at it’s core. But it was missing a key component to decouple WooCommerce via the REST API which is where CoCart comes in.

Why CoCart?

Is your store slow? Looking to decouple away from WordPress? Overwhelmed with getting WooCommerce working the way you want in your own REST API endpoints?

These are the struggles of web developers trying to decouple a WooCommerce store.

With CoCart, you can overcome these challenges and get straight to utilizing a REST API that is ready for you.

Source of Truth – CoCart sources the WooCommerce’s Data Stores API and repeats most WooCommerce hooks to provide a wider array of support for most WooCommerce extensions out of the box.
No Cookie Required – Our session handler generates a key for the user session in the WordPress database and stores session-related meta data for use on the client without the heavy load.
Basic Authentication – No Admin API Keys required. Customers can login with their account either with Email+Password, Username+Password, Phone Number+Password.
Domain Dominance – CORS can be an issue when decoupling so we made sure you have control of the origin.
Your Inventory – Search products by Name, ID or SKU, filter and return product data you need without authentication or private data exposed. REST shortcuts are readily provided for your next requests.
Reduced Cart Checkups – We have avoided the hassle of needing multiple requests to verify item and coupon validity in your cart. Our system efficiently checks stock, calculates totals and fees, ensuring real-time accuracy so your responses return up to date every time.
No Headless Checkout? – Load any cart session via the native site using the generated key, if you feel more comfortable using WooCommerce’s built in payment system.
Need your own cart callback? – Register custom callbacks without needing to create a whole new endpoint. Cart response returns once the callback is completed.
Want to track your customers? – Keep watch of all cart sessions, even the ones that are starting to expire or have expired.
Name Your Price Built In – Give your customers control of the price they pay. Encourage your audience to support you with payment flexibility that widens your paying audience.
Bulk Requests – Combine many cart requests in bulk to save time.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

★★★★★

An excellent plugin, which makes building a headless WooCommerce experience a breeze. Easy to use, nearly zero setup time. Harald Schneider

🛒 Built for developers, by developers

CoCart was born out of frustration with no existing solution on the market. As beautiful as it functions, the API is just as flexible with you, the developer, in mind. We spend an unfathomable amount of time making the API a joy to work with.

We invest our time into fully abstracting our API so you can focus on building a headless store. Integrate with CoCart in days, not months.

★★★★★

Amazing Plugin. I’m using it to create a react-native app with WooCommerce as back-end. This plugin is a life-saver! Daniel Loureiro

📦 Serious about going headless?

Try out more features and unlock your stores potential. Upgrade to complete the API with additional features that help you develop your store to it’s full potential.

See what else we have in store.

★★★★★

This plugin saved me tones of work and it is working amazingly! The plugin author provides fast and high quality support. Well done! @codenroll

😍 Priority support

We aim to provide regular support for the CoCart plugin on the WordPress.org forums. But please understand that we do prioritize support for our paying customers. Support can also be requested with the community on Discord.

🧰 Developer Tools

CoCart Beta Tester allows you to easily update to pre-release versions of CoCart for testing and development purposes.
CoCart VSCode extension for Visual Studio Code adds snippets and autocompletion of functions, classes and hooks.
CoCart Product Support Boilerplate provides a basic boilerplate for supporting a different product types to add to the cart with validation including adding your own parameters.
CoCart Cart Callback Example provides you an example of registering a callback that can be triggered when updating the cart.

📢 Testimonials – Developers just love it

★★★★★

Thanks for doing such a great work with this! Works exactly as expected and CoCart seems to have a nice community around it. The founder seems really devoted and that’s one of the key things for a plugin like this to live on and get the right updates in the future. We just got ourselves the lifetime subscription. Mighty Group Agency

★★★★★

This plugin works great out of the box for adding products to the cart via API. The code is solid and functionality is as expected, thanks Sebastien! Scott Bolinger, Creator of Holler Box

More testimonials

See the wall of love.

☀️ Upgrading

It is recommended that anytime you want to update CoCart that you get familiar with what’s changed in the release.

CoCart publishes release notes via the changelog.

CoCart uses Semver practices. The summary of Semver versioning is as follows:

MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes.
MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner.
PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.

You can read more about the details of Semver at semver.org

👍 Add-ons to further enhance CoCart

We also have add-ons that extend CoCart to enhance your development and your customers shopping experience.

CoCart – CORS enables support for CORS to allow CoCart to work across multiple domains.
CoCart – JWT Authentication allows you to authenticate via a simple JWT Token.
CoCart – Cart Enhanced enhances the data returned for the cart and the items added to it.
and more add-ons in development.

They work with the core of CoCart already, and these add-ons of course come with support too.

⌨️ Join our growing community

A Discord community for developers, WordPress agencies and shop owners building the fastest and best headless WooCommerce stores with CoCart.

Join our community

Built with developers in mind

Extensible, adaptable, and open source — CoCart is created with developers in mind. If you’re interested to jump in the project, there are opportunities for developers at all levels to get involved. Contribute to CoCart on the GitHub repository and join the party. 🎉

🐞 Bug reports

Bug reports for CoCart are welcomed in the CoCart repository on GitHub. Please note that GitHub is not a support forum, and that issues that aren’t properly qualified as bugs will be closed.

More information

The official CoCart API plugin website.
CoCart for Developers, an official hub for resources you need to be productive with CoCart and keep track of everything that is happening with the API.
CoCart API Reference
Subscribe to updates
Like, Follow and Star on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and GitHub

💯 Credits

This plugin is developed and maintained by Sébastien Dumont.
Founder of CoCart Headless, LLC.

Contributors & Developers

“CoCart” has not yet been translated in other languages. You can translate “CoCart” into your language.

INTERESTED IN DEVELOPMENT?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Please review your experience

If you like CoCart and it has helped with your development, please take a moment to provide a review. It helps to keep the plugin going strong, and is greatly appreciated.

Screenshots

Get Products (API v2)
Get Individual Product (API v2)
Add Item to Cart (API v2)

Installation

Minimum Requirements

WordPress v5.6
WooCommerce v7.0
PHP v7.4

Recommended Requirements

WordPress v6.0 or higher.
WooCommerce v9.0 or higher.
PHP v8.0 or higher.

Automatic installation

Automatic installation is the easiest option as WordPress handles the file transfers itself and you don’t need to leave your web browser. To do an automatic install of CoCart, log in to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Plugins menu and click Add New.

In the search field type “CoCart” and click Search Plugins. Once you’ve found the plugin you can view details about it such as the point release, rating and description. Most importantly of course, you can install it by simply clicking “Install Now”.

Manual installation

The manual installation method involves downloading the plugin and uploading it to your webserver via your favorite FTP application. The WordPress codex contains instructions on how to do this here.

Upgrading

It is recommended that anytime you want to update CoCart that you get familiar with what’s changed in the release.

CoCart publishes release notes via the changelog.

CoCart uses Semver practices. The summary of Semver versioning is as follows:

MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes.
MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner.
PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.

You can read more about the details of Semver at semver.org

FAQ

What does CoCart do?

CoCart provides a REST API that is ready to decouple WooCommerce away from WordPress. It allows you to search products by Name, ID or SKU, filter and return product data you need without authentication, manage cart sessions for customers and avoids the hassle of needing multiple requests to verify item and coupon validity in your cart. It also efficiently checks stock, calculates totals and fees, ensuring real-time accuracy so your responses return up to date every time.

CoCart sources the WooCommerce’s Data Stores API and repeats most WooCommerce hooks to provide a wider array of support for most WooCommerce extensions out of the box.

Who should use CoCart?

Pretty much everyone, who wants a faster ecommerce store to improve their business. WooCommerce runs multiple requests for multiple steps. We avoid the hassle of needing multiple requests for these steps and process them all together.

CoCart is perfect for ecommerce owners and developers who want to create an ecommerce app for mobile or a custom frontend shopping experience completely using the REST API.

Are there any limitations?

CoCart is designed with developers in mind allowing for complete control to customize or add support for a plugin to work with CoCart. CoCart does it’s best to work out of the box but if there is a compatibility issue with a plugin that you would like to work with CoCart. We would be happy to hear about it.

What is the source of truth?

CoCart sources the WooCommerce’s Data Stores API and repeats most WooCommerce hooks to provide a wider array of support for most WooCommerce extensions out of the box.

Does CoCart work for multi-site network?

Yes. Just install CoCart and activate it on the sites you want to use CoCart.

Can I have WordPress running on one domain and my headless ecommerce on another domain?

Absolutely. That is what CoCart is mainly developed for. You just need to enable CORS. You can do that easily with the CORS add-on or you can manually enable it via the filters available in the documentation.

Will CoCart interfere with other plugins?

The majority of plugins are not REST API specific so it shouldn’t. However, while we allow the source of truth for compatibility, there maybe a WooCommerce extension that returns data via an action hook that the REST API cannot understand during a specific action and may fail the response.

If that does happen, simply report the situation with as much detail as possible on our GitHub repository and we will try our best to find a solution.

How do I set up CoCart?

You will first need WooCommerce installed and set up to your configurations. Then install CoCart, activate and your ready to start using the REST API following the API Reference provided.

Please check the requirements listed in the installation section.

Why use CoCart and not WooCommerce’s Store API?

WooCommerce’s Store API is designed for the Gutenberg blocks which only requires a fixed format and is still prone to be used on native storefronts. It also lacks validation on the server end which you will need and not every extensions yet works with it out of the box. A lot of valuable information and abilities that developers require to help them are also unavailable and if you try to use the Store API for headless you will have issues managing the cart sessions.

CoCart’s API is designed for decoupling away from WordPress with ease. It’s a plug and play solution that just works out of the box. Also, improvements are always made to CoCart to ensure you get the best decoupled experience.

Do I need to have coding skills to use CoCart?

As this plugin provides a REST API built for developers, you will need to have some coding knowledge to use it.

Where can I find documentation for CoCart?

You can find the documentation here.

Can I change the formatting of values, add and change details to the responses?

You certainly can. There are over 100+ filters available to customize to your needs.

Why does CoCart use a custom session handler and table in the database?

If you’re familiar with WooCommerce, you may be wondering why using a custom session handler at all instead of the WooCommerce default session handler? A number of reasons but the ones that really matter are.

The default session handler only supports cookies.
The default session handler only saves changes at the end of the request in the shutdown hook.
The default session handler has no support for concurrent requests.
The default session handler does not support guest customers.
The default session handler does not store additional data that maybe required to help you.
The default session handler does not allow support for POS capability.
More consistent with modern web.

Is “WooCommerce Shipping and Tax” plugin supported?

No. “WooCommerce Shipping and Tax” ignores any custom REST API’s from allowing the ability to calculate the taxes from TaxJar except for WooCommerce Blocks and JetPack. We don’t recommend it. However, TaxJar for WooCommerce plugin is supported.

Is “TaxJar for WooCommerce” plugin supported?

If you have “TaxJar for WooCommerce” v3.2.5 or above and CoCart v3.0 or above installed… then yes, it is supported.

Can I use any modern stack?

Yes you can use your preferred tools and favorite modern technologies like Astro ,NextJS, React, Vue, Ember and more giving you endless flexibility and customization.

Can I install/update CoCart via Composer?

Yes. The best method would be to install/update CoCart from the GitHub repository but you can also do so via https://wpackagist.org/

Where can I report bugs?

Report bugs on the CoCart GitHub repository. You can also notify us via the support forum – be sure to search the forums to confirm that the error has not already been reported.

CoCart is awesome! Can I contribute?

Yes, you can! Join in on our GitHub repository and follow the development blog to stay up-to-date with everything happening in the project.

Is CoCart translatable?

Yes! CoCart is deployed with full translation and localization support via the ‘cart-rest-api-for-woocommerce’ text-domain.

Where can I get help or talk other users about CoCart core?

If you get stuck, you can ask for help in the CoCart support forum or join the CoCart Community on Discord where you will find like minded developers who help each other out. If you are in need of priority support, it will be provided by purchasing CoCart Plus or a higher tier.

Where can I find out more about the additional features?

Find out all relevant features and pricing information over on the official site.

My question is not listed here. Where can I find more answers?

Check out Frequently Asked Questions for more.

Reviews

Mark July 18, 2023

Perfect for setting up a headless woocommerce backend

fomigo June 15, 2023

Very good plugin, it helped me to connect Laravel catalog (for PageSpeed Insights, you know) & Woocommerce cart/checkout processing. Brilliant!

alusion March 28, 2023 1 reply

Plugin works great. Docs are great. Road map is great.When store front is finished we’ll go PRO 😎

hschneider66 August 9, 2022 1 reply

An excellent plugin, which makes building a headless WooCommerce experience a breeze. Easy to use, nearly zero setup time.

jnz31 August 16, 2021

since woocommerce is not offering product/cart api, this tools fits right in. you can do everything with it, all via api calls: products, variations, cart, shipping, checkout. (you might need the paid version as well. i bought them, so not sure, what comes out of the box and what features all need the extra mile. but still: worth it!) and the support is fast, too, thanks to seb. love it.

inspiredagency June 25, 2021

Plugin is a life saver when working turning wordpress & woocommerce into a headless cms. Support is also great and responsive to help with any issues you may have

Read all 21 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“CoCart – Decoupling Made Easy for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Translate “CoCart – Decoupling Made Easy for WooCommerce” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

v4.2.1 – 11th July, 2024

Hot Fix

When loading a cart from session a deprecated function was still triggered. It’s now been removed to prevent failing.

v4.2.0 – 11th July, 2024

In this release we have optimized our session handler making this release more compatibility with third party plugins. We also no longer use cookies as a backup for headless. This should also help with the confusion of needing to pass along the session cookie or reading the cookie to extract the cart key and help with user switching much better. A cart key is provided in both the cart response and returned headers. Saving the cart key in your own cookie or local storage is fairly straight forward.

We advise that you update on staging or local to check if you have used any of our experimental functions and filters that were added to the session handler to see if any have been deprecated. You can also see the list of deprecations below. If you have any questions about this update please contact us.

What’s New?

Can now request a guest cart via a requested header cocart-api-cart-key.

Improvements

Session Handler: Improved identifying cart without the need of cookies.
Session Handler: Added new function is_user_customer() to check the user role is a customer when authenticated before migrating cart from guest.
Authentication: Validation for invalid details was taking too long and failed to return an error message.
REST API: Updating the customer details in cart will now take additional billing and shipping fields as meta data. Validation is required by the developer using filter cocart_update_customer_fields.
REST API: Sanitized and formatted customer email address and phone number.
REST API: Formatted customer postcode if validated.
REST API: Product image sizes are now fetched using utility products class function get_product_image_sizes(). Cuts down on the filter cocart_products_image_sizes being in multiple places.
REST API: Currency in cart API v2 now returns currency_symbol_pos and the currency symbol will now return based on the set currency without lookup.
REST API: Improved headers returned and added nocache headers on authenticated requests.
REST API: Simplified returning the cart key to the headers.
REST API: Loading of the REST API optimized.
Plugin: Moved is_rest_api_request() function to the main class so it can be utilized outside of the plugin.
Plugin: Localization improvements.
Plugin: Updated plugin review notice.
Plugin: Code files organized better.

Deprecations

Removed the need to support web host “Pantheon” by filtering the cookie name.
Removed our session abstract CoCart_Session that extended WC_Session. Any remaining functions have moved to our refreshed session handler.
Function CoCart_Session_Handler::destroy_cookie() no longer used.
Function CoCart_Session_Handler::cocart_setcookie() no longer used.
Function CoCart_Session_Handler::get_cart() no longer used.
Filter cocart_cookie no longer used. Use woocommerce_cookie instead.
Filter cocart_cookie_httponly no longer used.
Filter cocart_cookie_supported no longer used.
Filter cocart_set_cookie_options no longer used.
Filter cocart_cart_use_secure_cookie no longer used. Use wc_session_use_secure_cookie instead.
Filter cocart_is_cart_data_valid no longer used.
Returned headers X-CoCart-API-Timestamp and X-CoCart-API-Version no longer used.

Developers

Introduced new action hook cocart_after_session_saved_data fires after the session is saved.
Introduced new filter cocart_send_nocache_headers to decide if nocache headers are sent.
Some functions from the cart and products API v2 have been moved to there own utility class so they can be utilized outside of the plugin.
Added utility function to check for coupon exists.
Moved two functions from CoCart Plus to be utilized outside of the plugin.

Compatibility

Tested with WordPress v6.6
Tested with WooCommerce v9.0

v4.1.1 – 14th June, 2024

Bug Fix

Uncaught error with no featured image for a variation of a variable product. Solves issue 416

v4.1.0 – 6th June, 2024

In this release we are adding some quality of life improvements.

What’s New?

REST API: Added new cart callback that allows you to set the customers billing details. See guide on how to use.
REST API: Basic Authentication now accepts a customers billing phone number as their username. Password is still required when authenticating.
REST API: Added the ability to set the customers billing phone number while adding item/s to cart.

Improvements

Plugin: Added more inline documentation for action hooks and filters.
Plugin: Should the session not be initialized when called, it now fails safely.
REST API: Authentication now detectable by authorization headers HTTP_AUTHORIZATION, REDIRECT_HTTP_AUTHORIZATION or getallheaders() function.
REST API: Re-calculating cart totals has moved to the abstract cart callback so it can be shared.
REST API: Setting a custom price for an item will now return that price for the item not just update the subtotals and totals.
REST API: When adding an item to cart with a custom price, checks if the product allows it to change. Set via filter cocart_does_product_allow_price_change.
REST API: Stock details now return for variations in the Products API (V2 Only). Schema updated to match.
REST API: Added headers CoCart-API-Cart-Expiring and CoCart-API-Cart-Expiration to be exposed with CORS.
REST API: Browser cache has been improved.

Bug Fixes

REST API: Most product endpoints for API v2 where suddenly not registering since v4.0.

Deprecations

Removed the legacy API that CoCart started with.
Removed support for stores running lower than WooCommerce version 4.5
User switching removed. Never worked 100%. Mainly added for internal debugging purposes.
No longer use cocart_override_cart_item filter. Recommend using cocart_item_added_to_cart action hook instead.
No longer user cocart_cart_updated hook. Replaced with cocart_update_cart_before_totals hook.

Developers

Introduced new filter cocart_auth_header that allows you to change the authorization header.
Introduced new filter cocart_set_customer_id that allows you to set the customer ID before initialized.
Introduced new filter cocart_available_shipping_packages that allows you to alter the shipping packages returned.
Introduced new filter cocart_does_product_allow_price_change that allows you to deny all custom prices or on specific items.
Introduced new filter cocart_update_customer_fields that allows for additional customer fields to be validated and added if supported.
Introduced new action hook cocart_after_item_added_to_cart that allows for additional requested data to be processed once item has added to the cart.
Introduced new action hook cocart_after_items_added_to_cart that allows for additional requested data to be processed once items are added to the cart.
Introduced new action hook cocart_update_cart_before_totals fires before the cart has updated via a callback.
Introduced new action hook cocart_update_cart_after_totals fires after the cart has updated via a callback.
Added the request object and the cart object as parameters for filter cocart_cart. No longer use $from_session parameter.

Compatibility

Tested with WooCommerce v8.9

v4.0.2 – 17th May, 2024

Bug Fixes

REST API: Reverted a change that broke the ability to clear the cart. Was falsely notify it cleared when it did not.
WordPress Dashboard: WooCommerce System Status was not echoing CoCart tips correctly.

Improvements

REST API: Products API, Schema, added properties for reviews section in both API v1 and API v2.

v4.0.1 – 15th May, 2024

Bug Fix

REST API: Class ReserveStock not found when adding products to cart.

Developer note: A line was unintentionally removed that calls the class for use.

v4.0.0 – 13th May, 2024

In this release, we are happy to provide some of the various improvements made through out the plugin that were from the originally planned v4 release. These improvements are backwards compatible but one change is not. See the developer note for details.

Developer note: This release requires the quantity parameter to pass the value as a string for both adding items or updating items. If you are not new to CoCart then please update your code to account for this change.

Find out more about what’s new in CoCart 4.0 in our release post!

Hope you enjoy this release.

What’s New?

REST API: Added batch support for cart endpoints listed below. (API v2 supported ONLY) See article for batch usage.
- - Add item/s to cart.
- - Clear cart.
- - Remove item.
- - Restore item.
- - Update item.
- - Update cart.

Bug Fixes

Plugin: Fixed various text localization issues.
REST API: Access-Control-Allow-Credentials being outputted as 1 instead of true. Solves issue 410. Thanks to @SebastianLamprecht for reporting it.
REST API: Update cart requests no longer fails and continues to the next item if an item in cart no longer exists.
REST API: Products API schema has been completed for v1.
REST API: Products API schema has been corrected for v2.
WordPress Dashboard: Plugin suggestions now lists CoCart JWT Authentication add-on.

Improvements

REST API: Now checks if the request is a preflight request.
REST API: Error responses are now softer to prevent fatal networking when a request fails.
REST API: Callback for cart update now passes the cart controller class so we don’t have to call it a new.
REST API: Cart schema tweaks.
REST API: Cart and Product schema are now cached for performance.
Plugin: Added more inline documentation for action hooks and filters.
Plugin: Improved database queries.
Plugin: Updated to latest WordPress Code Standards.
WordPress Dashboard: Added CoCart add-on auto updates watcher.
WP-CLI: Updating CoCart via command will now remove update database notice.

Developers

REST API: Two new headers return for cart responses only. CoCart-API-Cart-Expiring and CoCart-API-Cart-Expiration.

These two new headers can help developers use the timestamps of the cart in session for when it is going to expire and how long until it does expire completely.

REST API: Error tracking is returned with the error responses when WP_DEBUG is set to true to help with any debugging.
REST API: Class aliases have been added to API v2 controllers after changing the class names for consistency.

Compatibility

Tested with WooCommerce v8.8

v3.12.0 – 18th March, 2024

Security Patch

📢 This release solves a validation issue for both versions of the Products API when accessing an individual product. It is important that you update to this release asap to keep your store secure.

Bug Fixes

Corrected: Products API v1 Schema for weight object.
Added: Missing Products API v1 Schema for Image sizes.
Fixed: Schema product type options to match with parameters.
Fixed: Products API returning custom attributes with special characters incorrectly. Solves issue 401
Fixed: Some requested data was not sanitized.

Compatibility

Tested with WordPress v6.5

View the full changelog here.