# Shopping cart

When building ecommerce, the shopping cart management is one of the key steps, as it bridges the gap between browsing and buying, driving the customer to the checkout process.

![A sample product page with shopping cart summary](/files/VbgbwZOJjTaY9c6Ddixd)

This guide will walk you through all the actions that you typically want to implement on your shopping cart, like adding a new line item, updating quantities, or displaying a cart summary to the customer.

{% hint style="info" %}
We will assume all the example requests to be authenticated through a valid access token for a **sales channel**. See the [Authentication](/core/authentication.md) and [Applications](/core/api-credentials.md) sections of our documentation if you need more information on how to get an access token for your client or about the different types of credentials you can get.
{% endhint %}


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