Shopping cart

[d0nny]

Not quite sure this is specific to PHP, but I have developed a site for a friend where she wants to start selling her products - previously its just be a catalogue to view items then call up and order.

What I want to integrate a shopping cart facility somehow with the existing framework.
I've had a look at OSCommerce, and Open Source shopping cart, but this seems to be a separate catalogue and cart facility. I want to try to integrate everything within the existing structure.

Does anyone know of such a system I can use?

 

[d0nny]

Forgot to mention that the site is written in PHP with a mySQL database behind it for all the products.

 

[jpadie]

Donald

you're not going to like this ... but it's easy to write your own!

essentially to enable a shopping cart you need the following bits of functionality:

1. session management (to identify the cart)
2. cart management (create/update/delete/view items)
3. user management (if you want carts to persist across sessions)

then you need to plug the cart into a payment system. the easiest that i have used is the paypal API. you just loop over your cart and twist the data into paypal speak. takes a few minutes tops.

if you want to overlay a refund system directly into your app (rather than having it as a customer services exception process) you will need a bit more time.

lastly you need to inform the customer of the relevant e-commerce regs on minimum information at each step, and provide an emailed receipt (or equivalent).

i'd estimate a day's time total to write a pretty good e-commerce system.

PROVIDED THAT .... your basic system is written modularly and 'cleverly' enough to feed the right data to the e-commerce system.

i'd be happy to work off line with you on this if you like.

 

[d0nny]

Yes, thanks jpadie. I thought as much as I have been investigating tonight.
My client has progressed her payment system with RBSWorldpay so I'm not sure how that will integrate with whatever I need to do. So it might be the plugging in to the payment system that is the more difficult.

Thanks for the offer of offline help - I might take you up on that.

 

[jpadie]

So long as the api is published for worldpay (and it is) you should be fine.

 

[johnwm]

You will find a lot of stuff on Worldpay integration here

If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
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[jpadie]

Donny

drop me an email if you want to collaborate - you have my address still, I guess. i will start on a shopping cart anyway as i can see uses for a modular cart in one of my applications. i will try to make the interfaces as easy as possible, both on the output side and the input side.

when/if finished i will, of course, publish the code here.

Justin