I’m pinging the list to see if anyone is working on an open-source
e-commerce engine based on Rails yet - something like OSCommerice I
guess.
Anyone? Is there interest out there for such a thing?
I have such a product which has been extracted from real world code. It
currently runs 3 production rails sites in various shapes and forms,
implemented as a rails engine.
Basic feature list:
This product has been created from contracts I’ve had over the last 6-8
months. I’ve never managed an open source project before, and wondering
how
big of a time commitment it might be.
I’m a freelancer who runs a two-man web shop…so I’m looking to enhance
the
product with a little bit of help if possible and perhaps bring in some
more
business selling commercial support & customizations.
Any feedback or comments on taking on such a challenge would be welcome.
Hi Seth,
I really don’t have too much to add, but here’s a couple of thoughts.
I think a well designed rails engine or plugin would likely get a lot
of use, certainly a lot of apps that people code are oriented towards
ecommerce.
That said, I can remember looking at OSCommerce a couple of years
back. Initially I thought that I would likely want to use it to set
up my own ecommerce site. But the more I looked into the more I read
about people not really being able to configure it to suit there
needs, and that it many cases that this was more work than writing
their own app. Eventually I shied away… Clearly any rails app or
engine along this lines would need to steer clear of that kind of
problem.
I am too new to rails to have any insight about how to go about
creating an engine or plugin that will both add functionality that
otherwise would take a long to code while also being flexible enough
that it doesn’t lock developers into an overly specific paradigm of
an ecommerce site. I can spot an OSCommerce site on the first page
load. I think that’s bad.
Take care,
Sean
subimage interactive wrote:
Anyone home?
Yeah, but they’re too busy bashing Java and giggling about textmate. 
Seriously though, I’ve found that this list is heavily tilted towards
newbies (myself
included), and you’re probably not gonna get many takers from that camp.
Well, I’d imagine
there will be lots of people who will be interested in your project once
it’s available,
but they’re not gonna have much to say now. I’ve also found that the
things that get
responses on here vary dramatically… and more things don’t get a
response than do.
But anyway, what I’d do if I were you is go ahead and get a ruby-forge
account, make a
little home page for your project and send out an ANN email about it.
And if it’s
releasable (sounds like it is), go ahead and release it. I think people
tend to contribute
to or comment on open source code when they actually get around to using
it.
I was looking at the open source projects page on the rails wiki the
other day and I think
the only e-commerce project on there
(http://trac.vaillant.ca/store.rb/wiki) hasn’t
released anything. So, your project will be the first into the niche…
and you could
probably sell consulting/support for it too.
I wouldn’t worry about the time involved… lot’s of stalled projects
out there and you
have more to gain by keeping it up. To cop a stupid advertising slogan,
just do it.
b
On 2/18/06, subimage interactive [email protected] wrote:
I’m pinging the list to see if anyone is working on an open-source
e-commerce engine based on Rails yet - something like OSCommerice I guess.
There’s store.rb
http://trac.vaillant.ca/store.rb/wiki
it seems to be going really slow but there are still signs of life
there. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to welcome new/more contributors.
C
I’m game. I would like to see what you have done. I think you would
do well to open source it. If you use svn and someone commits a
change you dont like you can always roll back I don’t think it
would be that much extra work for you to manage the open source
project for it either. Especially not compared to what you can gain
from others contributions.
I would help out with some code and such to create a nice ecommerce
product for rails. I imagine you will get a lot more feedback if you
release it then just talking about it too
So I encourage you to go for it. You don't have much to lose by
doing it and you stand to gain a lot more eyes on it and more code
written for it then your two man team could do easily.
Cheers-
-Ezra
On Feb 19, 2006, at 5:11 PM, subimage interactive wrote:
This product has been created from contracts I’ve had over the last
Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732
Cool - I’m working on getting the code ready to be released into the
wild.
GenSelect is actually hosted on a very screwed up MediaTemple server at
the
moment. All of my sites are going to be switched to a new dedicated
server
over at rimuhosting this week most likely.
MediaTemple = not rails friendly…
subimage interactive wrote:
I’m pinging the list to see if anyone is working on an open-source
e-commerce engine based on Rails yet - something like OSCommerice I
guess. Anyone? Is there interest out there for such a thing?
I’d be interested.
I’m currently building on an e-commerce system in rails, so I would have
some code to contribute.
BTW, who is the hosting through on the GenSelect site? It was very slow
for me and actually became unresponsive! I’m assuming the hosting was
to blame and not the code!
Dan
On 2/18/06, subimage interactive [email protected] wrote:
- Product & order management
I’m a freelancer who runs a two-man web shop…so I’m looking to enhance the
product with a little bit of help if possible and perhaps bring in some more
business selling commercial support & customizations.
Any feedback or comments on taking on such a challenge would be welcome.
Hm. What I’d like to see is a written up document about how to
properly go about creating an e-commerce site. How the products table
generally should be laid out. How orders should relate to products
and inventory and shipping. General guidelines about credit card
handling. Stuff like that.
Once people have access to that, creating the store in Rails shouldn’t
be too difficult.
The Agile Rails book is an incomplete (and probably too simplistic)
solution.
Joe
This is exactly what’s covered the “Agile Rails” book
Having worked on a Rails storefront / catalog / fulfillment system
for the past three months, I totally agree that there’s much more to
an e-commerce solution than is in the AWD book. 
Like has been
said about implementing a forum, once you get into it, you can be
surprised at the complexity that a full e-commerce engine entails.
This, I think, is why there are many cart solutions out there, but
few that are open source (the one I’m working on isn’t).
On Feb 21, 2006, at 3:30 PM, Joe Van D. wrote:
The Agile Rails book is an incomplete (and probably too simplistic)
solution.
It certainly doesn’t cover the e-commerce side, not does it deal with
product categorization and so on. I wouldn’t want to pretend that it
should be used as the basis for a sophisticated store offering.
Dave
Benjamin C. wrote:
Having worked on a Rails storefront / catalog / fulfillment system for
the past three months, I totally agree that there’s much more to an
e-commerce solution than is in the AWD book. 
Like has been said
about implementing a forum, once you get into it, you can be surprised
at the complexity that a full e-commerce engine entails. This, I
think, is why there are many cart solutions out there, but few that are
open source (the one I’m working on isn’t).
For people interested in this sort of thing, OFBiz
(http://www.ofbiz.org) is code worth looking at, even if it’s in Java -
if nothing else, to glean some ideas from. They have a good community
around it, and it’s under a very liberal license. It does ecommerce,
but also some logistics like shipping, warehouse, and other things.
–
David N. Welton
Linux, Open Source Consulting
On 2/26/06, David N. Welton [email protected] wrote:
For people interested in this sort of thing, OFBiz
(http://www.ofbiz.org) is code worth looking at, even if it’s in Java -
if nothing else, to glean some ideas from. They have a good community
around it, and it’s under a very liberal license. It does ecommerce,
but also some logistics like shipping, warehouse, and other things.
Hi All,
I’ve been following this conversation for a while, and finally decided
to put my 2 cents in…
Coming from a Perl background, I spent a lot of time implementing
e-commerce engines by modifying Interchange and open source e-commerce
application written in Perl (http://www.icdevgroup.org).
If a project is started to make a real e-commerce engine in RoR,
taking a look at how Interchange implements these things .
BTW, I’m currently working on implementing the FedEx FSM Direct XML
API as a RoR plugin. Which of course would be a perfect for a RoR
e-commerce engine.
Shawn M.
[email protected]
I had to do some searching a while back for something along these
lines. The offerings that exist in PHP are utterly nightmarish as far
as I could tell at the time. I haven’t seen Interchange, that sounds
pretty cool, but fwiw, if there were a reasonably useful RoR
e-commerce option, I’m sure it would come in very handy for a lot of
people. There’s also the side benefit that if other people do pick it
up they can uncover any security holes it might have. The more users
you have, on that side of things, the safer your system becomes.
But yeah, you’ll get better response if you actually do it.
On 2/26/06, Shawn M. [email protected] wrote:
BTW, I’m currently working on implementing the FedEx FSM Direct XML
API as a RoR plugin. Which of course would be a perfect for a RoR
e-commerce engine.
Shawn M.
[email protected]
Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
–
Giles Goat Boy
http://gilesmakesmusic.blogspot.com
http://gileswritescode.blogspot.com
