I’m a long time Java programmer and I’m considering switching my
consulting business to Rails. The only shopping cart solution out
there I could find is Substruct. Substruct is ok but it differs
significantly from my own personal goal of creating a shopping cart
that can be easily integrated into a custom website.
The goal is to create a shopping cart that could be used by
experienced Rails programmers. It wouldn’t do 100% of what you need
but I’ve never seen a shopping cart that didn’t need to be tweaked.
So this would be something that would contain all of the basics:
inventory management and organization, shopping cart and checkout
process, gateway integration and reporting. It would be technically
possible to run it as a standalone website but it would be pretty
generic looking. The idea is that the end user would customize some
of the views and styling.
I will have a very rough cut of the code in a week or so but I could
obviously use some help. If we get the right people involved this
will be a very useful product. Please contact me if you’re
interested. Please only respond if you have a serious amount of time
to dedicate to this. You don’t have to be a Rails guru (I’m
definitely not) but significant web app experience would be helpful.
Hi
I am also creating a shoppingcart system for a client of mine with a lot
of
functions in it. I have just finished up the admin interface for
products
and all tables connected to products in one way or another.
I’m a long time Java programmer and I’m considering switching my
consulting business to Rails. The only shopping cart solution out
there I could find is Substruct. Substruct is ok but it differs
significantly from my own personal goal of creating a shopping cart
that can be easily integrated into a custom website.
Yes a while ago. A lot of my thinking and ideas come from vpasp
platform which I have used for 8 years but now it is time that
tagclouds,ajax,rails and more become a part of ecommerce systems as
well as social networking sites.
Thanks for the tip. I went ahead and ordered the book (and the one
for Java developers while I was at it.) The gateway stuff is not a
problem since I plan on using ActiveMerchant. So far, that works very
well with Authorize.net (haven’t tested other gateways.)
Shopify is great but last I checked only the ActiveMerchant piece was
open source. They did a very nice job with it for sure. I’m looking
to replicate some of that functionality but as an open source project.
consulting business to Rails. The only shopping cart solution out
there I could find is Substruct. Substruct is ok but it differs
significantly from my own personal goal of creating a shopping cart
that can be easily integrated into a custom website.
Have you checked out Shopify?
–
Cheers,
Jacob A. - not related to Shopify in any way
the-soup.net is a small but growing group of railers (plus artists,
biz types) that are looking to work on interesting projects like yours.
I can’t guaranteee anything, but you’ll reach a audience of like
minded people.
disclaimer: I am most definitely associated with the-soup. mmm.
I’d be interested in this. I actually started on building an
ecommerce system a while back and just never found the time to finish
it up, it’s a lot of work. I spent the last 12 years working at
payment gateways as a developer and product manager.
What I really want to do is create an ecommerce system with a built in
payment gateway. I actually have quite a bit of code done on that
part already, with working connectors to Vital and Efsnet (Firstdata).
Just need to do the certifications, which I’ve done before several
times.
Right now I’ve been working on a recurring billing system that has a
natural language interface for defining recurring billing periods.
My suggestion would be to concentrate on the basics first. Social
features are great but not nearly as important as having the key
features most business owners want.
Checkout the pragmatic programmer bookstore tutorial that you can
download freely…there is some useful advice in there, shows you how
to build a shopping cart from scratch.
The only thing it doesn’t do, is deal with setting up merchant accounts
and payment gateways etc.