spree-performance

Spree Performance

Spree 6 is API-first: the hot paths are Store API requests (catalog reads, cart writes, checkout) and background jobs. Most wins come from a handful of known hotspots, not generic Rails tuning.

Measure first

1. Trace it. Add gem 'spree_opentelemetry' and point OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT at a collector (Jaeger locally: docker run --rm -p 16686:16686 -p 4318:4318 jaegertracing/jaeger:latest). Every Spree::Workflow run, each step, hook dispatch, event subscriber dispatch, webhook delivery and gateway call gets its own span alongside SQL and HTTP spans — e.g. carts.add_item, carts.complete process_payments. This tells you which step is slow without guessing. Custom workflows are traced automatically.
2. Count queries in a console or request spec: ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new($stdout) and run the workflow directly.
3. Production APM (Skylight, Scout, New Relic, Datadog) all work; Datadog/Honeycomb/New Relic can also ingest the OTel traces.

Cart writes: the recalculation pipeline

Cart mutations (Spree::Carts::AddItem, UpsertItems, line item updates/removals and other cart edits) run Spree.cart_recalculate_workflow (Spree::Carts::Recalculate), which:

1. refreshes totals via Spree.cart_recalculate_totals_workflow (Spree::Carts::RecalculateTotals),
2. rebuilds delivery proposals (cart.ensure_updated_fulfillments — delivery rate providers run here),
3. activates promotions (set_promotion_context hook, then Spree::PromotionHandler::Cart),
4. runs RecalculateTotals again to rebuild discounts and tax,
5. runs after_recalculate hook handlers.

RecalculateTotals regenerates typed rows (Spree::Discount, Spree::Fee, Spree::TaxLine) and calls cart.tax_provider.estimate(...) each time it runs on an unplaced cart. Consequences:

• An external tax provider is called at least twice per cart write. Cache estimates inside your provider (key on line items, quantities, amounts, ship-to address, exemptions) and keep timeouts tight. Placed orders are money-frozen and skip regeneration.
• External delivery rate providers run on every proposal rebuild — cache quotes per (address, package contents).
• Hook handlers (carts.recalculate.after_recalculate, carts.recalculate.set_promotion_context, carts.recalculate_totals.set_tax_line_context) run on every write. Keep them query-light; push anything non-essential to an event subscriber (cart.updated) which runs async.
• Never do network I/O inside a DB transaction. In your own workflows use external_step for gateway/network calls — it raises if run inside a workflow transaction and marks the span as a client call.
• Don't add after_save callbacks on Spree::LineItem/Spree::Cart that recalculate — the workflow already does, and callbacks multiply the work.

Catalog reads: N+1s

The Store API's ResourceController#collection already chains .includes(collection_includes).preload_associations_lazily (ar_lazy_preload) and paginates with Pagy (default limit 25, max 100). The products controller explicitly includes what lazy preloading can't pick up:

# Spree::Api::V3::Store::ProductsController#scope_includes (abridged)
[:seller, {
  primary_media: [attachment_attachment: :blob, poster_attachment: :blob],
  default_variant: [:prices, stock_levels: [:stock_location, :active_stock_reservations]],
  variants: [:prices, :seller, stock_levels: [:stock_location, :active_stock_reservations]]
}]

When building custom endpoints or serializers, copy that shape:

• There is no master variant. Listings read product.default_variant — preload it with :prices.
• variant.price_in(currency) uses the loaded prices association when present and falls back to one query per variant otherwise. Always preload prices before iterating.
• Spree::Media has a default scope that includes attachment and poster blobs; preload primary_media for listings.
• Add fields to a serializer → check the new associations are preloaded. In your controller, override scope_includes / collection_includes rather than calling .includes inline.
• Clients should use expand= only for what the screen needs and fields= for sparse payloads — every expansion is extra loading and serialization.

products = current_store.products.active
  .includes(primary_media: [], default_variant: [:prices])
  .preload_associations_lazily

HTTP caching on the Store API

Store catalog controllers (products, categories, collections, markets, currencies, locales, policies, sellers) include Spree::Api::V3::HttpCaching:

• Guests get Cache-Control: public (5 min, stale-while-revalidate on lists) plus an ETag; responses Vary on Accept, x-spree-currency, x-spree-locale, x-spree-channel. List ETags fold in max updated_at, count, expand, fields, q, page, limit, currency, locale and channel.
• Authenticated customers get private, no-store.

So a CDN in front of the API can cache guest catalog traffic — configure it to respect Vary/these headers, and keep the storefront sending the x-spree-* headers rather than query-string variants. For your own Store API controllers, call cache_collection(collection) / cache_resource(resource) in index/show actions (both return false after sending a 304). Cart, checkout and account endpoints must stay uncached.

Rails.cache is Solid Cache by default (DB-backed). It's fine for memoized lookups; switch to Redis/Valkey (redis_cache_store) if cache traffic becomes significant. Never cache per-customer data under shared keys.

Search

• Database provider (Spree::SearchProvider::Database, default): text search is a leading-wildcard LIKE over product names/SKUs (plus custom fields whose definitions are marked searchable), then Ransack filters. Fine for small catalogs; degrades past roughly 10K products. pg_trgm is enabled by a core migration on PostgreSQL — if you add a trigram index, EXPLAIN the generated SQL first so the index matches the actual expression.
• Meilisearch (spree_meilisearch gem, Spree.search_provider = 'SpreeMeilisearch::SearchProvider'): the right choice for medium/large catalogs and faceting.
  • Every product create/update commit enqueues Spree::SearchProvider::IndexJob (queue Spree.queues.search, retries with backoff) per store. Bulk imports generate a flood — route search to its own low-priority queue, or reindex once after the import: bin/rails spree:search:reindex (spree task search:reindex).
  • Reindex after changing index settings/presenter fields.

Images

Spree::Media defines named webp variants from Spree::Config.product_image_variant_sizes (default mini, small, medium, large, xlarge 2000×2000, og_image 1200×630) with preprocessed: true — Active Storage enqueues transforms at upload time, so each upload costs one transform per size (for video, also per poster). Rich-text :embed variants are generated on first use.

• Trim sizes you don't use in an initializer (must be set before models load) — fewer sizes = less CPU per upload.
• Route transforms away from checkout-critical work (config.active_storage.queues.transform), and put a CDN in front of /rails/active_storage/representations/ (see spree-deployment, CDN_HOST).
• Don't pre-warm variants from a subscriber — the named variants already are, and ad-hoc variants have different digests.

Background jobs

Spree jobs choose their queue from Spree.queues (defaults are all :default). Keys: default, events, exports, images, imports, products, variants, categories, collections, stock_location_stock_levels, coupon_codes, themes, addresses, gift_cards, webhooks, payment_webhooks, api_keys, search, stock_reservations, tax_identifiers, data_requests, payouts. Verify against Spree.queues in the installed spree_core (lib/spree/core.rb).

# server/config/initializers/spree.rb
Spree.queues.payment_webhooks   = :spree_payment_webhooks
Spree.queues.events             = :spree_events
Spree.queues.webhooks           = :spree_webhooks
Spree.queues.stock_reservations = :spree_stock_reservations
Spree.queues.imports            = :spree_imports
Spree.queues.images             = :spree_images
Spree.queues.search             = :spree_search
Spree.queues.categories         = :spree_categories
Spree.queues.collections        = :spree_collections
Spree.queues.payouts            = :spree_payouts

Use the current key names — Spree.queues.taxons= and stock_location_stock_items= are deprecated, and assigning a key Spree doesn't read (e.g. reports) is silently ignored.

Solid Queue tuning

• config/queue.yml polls queues in listed order — put checkout/payment/stock-reservation work first, bulk catalog/import/image work later, keep the trailing "*".
• In combined mode, job threads share the Puma process and GVL with web requests: raising JOB_THREADS there trades API latency for throughput. Once jobs matter, split to a bin/jobs worker (SOLID_QUEUE_IN_PUMA=false on web) and scale with JOB_THREADS/JOB_CONCURRENCY/replicas.
• For isolation, define several workers in queue.yml — e.g. one pool for [spree_payment_webhooks, spree_events, spree_webhooks, mailers, default] and another for [spree_imports, spree_images, active_storage_transform, spree_search].
• CSV imports cap themselves via SPREE_IMPORT_JOB_CONCURRENCY (default 75% of JOB_THREADS) so a large import can't occupy every thread.
• DB pool must be ≥ RAILS_MAX_THREADS + JOB_THREADS (+ headroom).
• Watch backlog in Mission Control at /jobs.
• Sidekiq is an option for very high volume — list every queue in sidekiq.yml with weights (no catch-all). See spree-deployment.

Event subscribers

Subscribers are async by default (Spree::Events::SubscriberJob on Spree.queues.events). Use subscribes_to 'order.placed', async: false only for work that must happen in-request and is cheap. Heavy or network-bound side effects belong in async subscribers.

Dashboard (React admin)

The dashboard uses TanStack Query (default staleTime 60s, retry: 1, no refetch on focus). In plugins:

• Fetch through adminClient and pass expand: [...] only for data the view renders; use list limit and Ransack filters instead of loading everything.
• Reuse query keys so cached data is shared across components; set a longer staleTime for slow-changing reference data.
• A slow dashboard page is almost always a slow Admin API endpoint — trace it server-side.

Common mistakes

• Iterating variants and calling price_in without preloading prices.
• Calling an external tax/rate API without caching — it runs several times per cart write.
• Doing HTTP calls inside a transaction or a synchronous hook handler.
• Leaving all Spree.queues on :default in a busy store — imports and image transforms delay payment webhooks and stock reservation expiry.
• Serving guest catalog traffic without a CDN honoring Vary, or stripping the x-spree-* headers at the CDN.
• Using Spree::Product.all in custom endpoints — scope through current_store and paginate.

Where to read further

• node_modules/@spree/docs/dist/developer/providers/observability.md — spans, sampling, span metrics
• node_modules/@spree/docs/dist/developer/deployment/background_jobs.md, caching.md, cdn.md
• node_modules/@spree/docs/dist/developer/core-concepts/search-filtering.md
• Source: Spree::Carts::Recalculate / RecalculateTotals (spree_core/app/workflows/spree/carts/), Spree::Api::V3::HttpCaching, Spree::Api::V3::ResourceController
• Related skills: spree-workflows, spree-order-totals, spree-taxes, spree-deployment, spree-events-webhooks