Commerce Server Core http modules

Commerce Server Core has a set of http modules that are used to set up context objects for each subsystem.

These context object are used for tasks such as to get products from the catalog system, or add an item to the cart in the order system. Because http modules need to be registered in the web.config file, this can cause complications during deployments and upgrades.

Because there now are Sitecore pipeline processors that perform all of the same actions as the http modules, you do not need to add the http modules to the web.config file. These pipeline processors are registered in the CommerceServer.config file, inside the initialize, preprocessRequest, and httpRequestEnd pipelines. Because these pipleline processors are part of the Sitecore configuration framework, you can patch out pipeline processors for subsystems that you do not use. For example, if you are using SCpbMD, you would patch out all of the pipeline processors except for catalog.

You can still add the legacy http modules into the web.config file, but if you do, you should patch out the equivalent Sitecore pipeline processors.