Working with the cart class // eCommerce Suggestions?

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
I'm opening up a small local business where people can sell their items online, similar to a small-scale eBay or Amazon (eventually I'd love to get to that level someday!).

I'm designing everything myself, and stumbled upon CI and the cart class recently - curious to see if it would help to speed up the development time. I've fallen in love with CI, but I'm wondering is it realistic to build this type of site all in CI? How is the interactivity between the cart class and session class - and what about security?

Getting a bit off-topic, but wanted to say, I feel that there is little documentation out there for developing these types of projects. Often, tutorials will go through creating these smaller, brick&&mortar;type websites. My scope is larger than that, and now that I'm past designing the website, I've found it difficult to seek help with regards to actually going about building the "shopping part" I guess. People say, you can Google anything but I swear I've done so much searching! I'm stumped ... my luck there's probably some book out there that would end my frustration and detail everything that I'm looking for. :/

Are there any advantages to using some type of commercial solution? The thing is, I don't need all that's attached with those, I'd only want to have code for how to build the backend because I already have everything styled.

((( I'd give anything to know how the big dogs like Amazon or eBay do it! hehe )))

This community is wonderful, and I'm just curious if anyone out there has any suggestions and/or feedback for me?

Thanks for any help at all, would be much, much appreciated.

YL

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
Well, the really big companies built their own solutions from their underlying raw coding language - same as Google itself. They use a variety of PHP, JSP, and Python depending on what system you look at.

You should be aware that the cart class is completely new to this version of CI, so you are unlikely to find much in the way of tutorials as it is new to most of us (it was introduced officially just a few weeks ago, though available in the SVN version largely undocumented for awhile before that).

There is no reason you can't use CI, and in fact it will considerably speed development time when compared to raw PHP itself (that's why it exists, after all)...but, it comes down entirely to what features you want in your store and what is already out there.

Many people sware by Wordpress with an ecommerce plugin, for instance.

A basic ecommerce site is actually really, really, really easy. You could probably bang one out in a few weeks.

The devil is in the details. Advanced inventory management, returns processing, accounting functions, order tracking, by-the-pound shipping estimates - those things take time. And if they need to be used by people who aren't a developer (or you specifically), then you have to build a backend to manage those operational functions.

Me, I originally built my first ecommerce website in pure PHP4 (PHP5 didn't exist yet, and CI certainly didn't Ruby - without the rails - was just starting to get some notice). I used Paypal Pro for the shopping cart and payment processing, making that part of the system much easier. For backend I used a coded-url protected (had no login system) backend to manage special orders and inventory, but otherwise just used Paypal features including payment notifications and system for refunds.

There was no category system, I justed had pages with my own self-styled MVC concept that would pull certain items through an SQL WHERE statement if it was requested (like size=large, color=red, etc).

Items were displayed basically by using a helper function (like get_item($itemnum) ) to get price and inventory info, and then the actual gallery of items was just hand-adjusted and moved around and restyled as it suited us.

When two people (a developer and wife) are the only ones using a system it is a completely different scenario to building a system other people are intended to use.

Its not that one system is better than another - they are just good for entirely different people.

If you are doing it yourself, focus on what you absolutely no frills NEED to make it work. This will allow a real chance of success and allow you to keep your sanity.

[eluser]skunkbad[/eluser]
I'm actually just starting a new ecommerce project that I'm in the planning stages. My initial idea is to have a CI based front end, with custom page design/templates, and then just pass the shopping cart off to one of the popular ecommerce solutions like zen-cart or oscommerce. I've done this before, just never with CI. I was kind of hoping that osQuantum or ShopIgniter would be ready by now, but neither is...

[eluser]gyo[/eluser]
Sorry for the delay...

Anyway I think yellow_leopard misunderstood the meaning of CI as a framework and not a ready to use CMS.
Well at least it looks like...

Are there any advantages to using some type of commercial solution? The thing is, I don’t need all that’s attached with those, I’d only want to have code for how to build the backend because I already have everything styled.

There are tons of reasons for choosing a commercial product: mainly because a commercial software has been hugely tested, and probably more secure that one somebody could do without much experience.
Plus, you say you have "everything styled", do you mean that the HTML+CSS template is done?
If so, well, it's a starting point, but there's still a lot to do in the frontend.

Anyway, aiming at the heavy-weights (ebay, amazon) is always fine, but first go through the entire process.

Or better said... use a pre-made script for handling a e-commerce: my favourite is Magento.

[eluser]t.r.cmpbll113[/eluser]
if you are to go with pre built carts i would suggest you this : "http://www.shoppingcartelite.com"