Hi Susan,
thanks for sharing that.
I have a question about you current catalog shop project though. Are you making a full-fledge catalog shop system for MODx? Currently I’m working on a catalog shop system as well, and using AJAX and tab based interface, which I do realize that it’s start to look more like what you want it to be, by reading your previous post. Is it going to be adescendent from shopX or it is a whole new project? If you can give me the list of some of the features that you are wanting to have, it will be awesome, so I know whether we are building the same application or not. If yes, I would love to build it together with you, whether it will be using your code based or my code based, as long as we can finish it up faster, it will be awesome.
So far what I have is the item module, which support one item having a sub items beneath it. This is a must features that I ignored when building a catalog shop system based on ASP .Net, and I don’t want to repeat the same mistake again. Basically what it does is allowing you to have one item, lets say a tshirt design a, and you want to have an option for sizes, color, and model (girl or boy). By having a sub childs, we can create multiple items that will incorporate all this. With that, we can keep track the real amount of items quantity that we have in stock for specific item option combination, as well as we can assign a different price and weight for the sub childs, but they will be listed under the main item. I also build a multiple files attachment to the item or sub items. Basically you can attached as many files as you want for one item. Another features that I also want to add, and it’s still not being developed yet, I want to have an attributes assigned to each category that will reflect directly to all items being listed under that category. Imagine having a category computer/laptop. Basically I want a different/special attribute assigned to laptop category, for example harddrive, processor, memory, and etc. With this attribute features, we are able to make an extension for the catalog shop to provide comparison module that will compare several items under the same category. I also want this attributes assignment to be inherited accross each sub category. I might need to consult this with Adam I believed. He is the one who create the inherit binding, right?
Now here comes the category part, basically it will be plain category management system, which will have unlimited sub categories, and I might suggest that it will be limited to not more than 99 sub categories, well in real world that won’t happen, believe me
The next thing will be sales tax and shipping management. The sales tax management will allow the shop owner to define several location based on commbination zip code and country or combination city, state, and country. The shipping management will allow the shopw owner to specified different pricing for different carrier, and it will have a general hook that can be attached to specific carrier, which what it does is sending a web service request and retrieving information of the shipping price.
The check out system is fairly straight forward, but I want to have this system to be extended further, so allowing the user to check out the cart by popuping a new window, considering when you checkout something, you need to send them to https connection, which it cause a different session management, unless if we append the phpsessid manually, which will cause security breach, because of exposing the SID, but I’m still not sure the best approach to this.
The final thing will be the transaciton management. This one will be more like the extended system for the checkut process which ties in with the items system. It will record each transaction being made, and it will later able to give a complete report of all the transactions being made, with all the items being sold, and with all the transaction status, whether the user decided to cancel the payment, which usually causing the current item quantity to be decreased from the stock already. So with this system, the shop owner able to revert back all te failed transaction to make all the sold items on that failed transaction to be updated with the right quantity value. More features can be added to this, but it’s better to think of a better code based that can be extended without the needs of me to bloated the system with all unnecessary features.
The code and data base is able to support multiple shop in one installation. So for mall owner who is willing to have different shops hosted on one system, it will support that. Let say that I’m a fans of multi site system. I always thought it will provide a better service to client, because when I update the core, it will update the system for my clients, even though I do realize that updating multiple site sometimes can cause a lot of headache. But anyway, in case if somebody willing to make a front intrface for mall, it will be do able using the current code based that I build.
That’s all for now.
I hope you can share yours as well.
EDIT: I also use AJAX heavily on the administration side. I’’m using prototype lite, moo.fx, moo.ajax, and pork iframe. The total ammount is about less than 20 or 30 kb, which includes my js addition to extend and combine them all. I also realize the incompatibility of certain features that I use with other browser such as IE, but it’s just making the animation to looks little bit sulkier, other than that, the functionaility is still working fine. Another problem is creating a robust design that can make the interface looks nicer and professional, which I ended up making it looks ugly
(oh well, what do you expect from a guy like me, FYI, I’m not a designer
)
Another concern that I have, I’m not sure how heavy the system will be, but the database relation is being handled by array and multiple sql connection back and forth, such as sub childs and files. If somebody can give me a heads up on what needs to be watched out when designing a database system and etc, like the amount of mysql query to be made and etc, it will be great.
☆ A M B ☆
Hehehee...
MODX Staff