Shopping Online

cddc3

Hi guys/gals,
I'm tryin to set up an online shopping facility for a local supermarket!!
Can anybody help me???
I have created the website but avee no idea about bein able to store whatever people may have ordered...
Do i do this using a database and how???
Any help would b greatly appreciated....
Thanks guys/gals

fatlog

can of worms.

i think this is a lot more complex than you may think.

you would need something like php/mysql for the interface and back-end. you would also need SSL so that all transactions are secure. all the pages would more than likely be dynamically generated so (i'm assuming) your static HTML pages would need to be adapted.

and this is only touching on it.

if you've never done anything liek this before then you will need to do a lot of upskilling.

alternatively you may be able to find a site that provides a sort of "off the shelf store" that you are able to add your own graphics to.

ixoy

Seriously, a large amount of work involved. As stated, you'd need to be looking at getting into some programming language - Java, PHP, ASP with .NET or somesuch - to do it properly. You'd also need a database server to store all the information - that will increase the cost (for a license) unless you go open source.
There are a couple of off-the-shelf plugin kits that you potentially could use. It might give your site a more generic feel but it'd cut down immensely on development costs. Of course you'd have to fork out a bit of cash for it..

amen

what type of store and how much did you quote for ?

cddc3

a local supermarket
i didn't quote yet why???

bringitdown

There are buckets of software packages (e.g. osCommerce) and hosting companies that provide these.

All you have to do is glue it together and create the site interface. The mechanics of it would be taken care of buy the backend software.

e.g. osCommerce : PHP, MySQL backed, SSL: http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/oscommerce

It is not as hard as you think, unless you decide to reinvent the wheel and do the backend yourself.

swiss

LAMP tbh.

cddc3

Its the back end stuff i'm worried about...
How difficult is the process

bringitdown

cddc3 wrote:

Its the back end stuff i'm worried about...
How difficult is the process

Demo of osCommerce: http://www.m8solutions.com/oscommerce_demo.php

Plenty of alternatives - use Google.

Why not get LAMP up and running and install osCommerce and give it a try?

mathie

cddc3 wrote:

Its the back end stuff i'm worried about...
How difficult is the process

How long is a piece of string.
Depends on what you want to do.
Can you give us a more detailed spec. of what you're trying to do?
No offense but it sounds like you're out of your depth if you don't know if you should use a database or not.
Those are the kind of questions I was asking 7 years ago and even now I would think twice about taking on something this big.
M

cddc3

i'm askin how would u connect ur online shoppin website to a db

Seth Brundle

cddc3 wrote:

i'm askin how would u connect ur online shoppin website to a db

to be honest and with all respect, if you are asking this then ou are totally way out of your league for this kind of project. You could end up in serious trouble legally if you complete it but make a complete balls of it!

cddc3

I'm posted this to get some help so if people like kbannon are just gonna criticise just bugger off wit all respect this defeatest attitude is not the kinda help i was lookin for..
Thanks for your opinion but no thanks

stevenmu

cddc3 wrote:

i'm askin how would u connect ur online shoppin website to a db

Basically, unless you go for one of the packages mentioned above, you'll need to write an application which will sit on the web server. This application will take the selections users make in the forms on your websites and build order records and save them to the database. Ideally it would also dynamically generate the web pages that contain the product selection forms from a Product table too.

There's a couple of ways (platforms) you can develop this application, the two most common at the moment are with PHP or ASP.Net. PHP is generally used on Apache webservers and ASP.Net would be used on IIS servers, so if you're retricted in your choice of server, then you're pretty much limited in your choice of development platform. You'll also need database software on the server, generally PHP applications seem to use MySQL databases and ASP.Net use SQL Server but again you may be limited by the server you're hosting on.

Use google to try and find some tutorials for PHP and ASP.Net, many will have basic shopping cart examples, to get an idea of the complications you're letting yourself in for.

mathie

cddc3 wrote:

I'm posted this to get some help so if people like kbannon are just gonna criticise just bugger off wit all respect this defeatest attitude is not the kinda help i was lookin for..
Thanks for your opinion but no thanks

We're trying to offer you some sobering advice.
:rolleyes:

cddc3

stevenmu wrote:

Basically, unless you go for one of the packages mentioned above, you'll need to write an application which will sit on the web server. This application will take the selections users make in the forms on your websites and build order records and save them to the database. Ideally it would also dynamically generate the web pages that contain the product selection forms from a Product table too.

There's a couple of ways (platforms) you can develop this application, the two most common at the moment are with PHP or ASP.Net. PHP is generally used on Apache webservers and ASP.Net would be used on IIS servers, so if you're retricted in your choice of server, then you're pretty much limited in your choice of development platform. You'll also need database software on the server, generally PHP applications seem to use MySQL databases and ASP.Net use SQL Server but again you may be limited by the server you're hosting on.

Use google to try and find some tutorials for PHP and ASP.Net, many will have basic shopping cart examples, to get an idea of the complications you're letting yourself in for.

Thank you for the advice

WizZard

cddc3 wrote:

Thank you for the advice

How much/what is your experience in development?

What you're talking about is not an easy task for a newbie.

cddc3

WizZard wrote:

How much/what is your experience in development?

What you're talking about is not an easy task for a newbie.

i'm doin a degree in bis
just finished third year

fatlog

we're not being defeatest but as mentioned this is just some sobering advice.
i dont think you fully grasp what it is you want to do. building a static website in basic HTML (which it sounds like you have done), is a completely different proposition to building a dynamic site, in say PHP, that talks to a DB.

A: you would need to know a programming language like PHP, Java, C++, PERL, ASP or similar. YOu would also need to know some javscript.
B: you would need to know a certain amount of SQL and how a database is structured.
C: you would need SSL for secure transactions.
tie this all together on a server

you would want to give yourself a few months to skill up on each of the components (from scratch) and then another few months to design and develop the project which wouldn't be any piece of cake to begin with.

as mentioned i reckon you're best option would be to try an off-the-shelf product which allows you to apply you're own style to it.

amen

I started to write a reply but as I did my list of items to think about/resolve just kept growing and I stopped once my list got to 30. The list didn't just include programming but logistical things such as how the items will be delivered, how updates will be performed, crediting customers, what happens if an incorrect price is entered and a customer purchases at that price etc

This could become a major project and would probally cost in the region of several thousand euro it not more. Have you done a project/business plan ?
Is there a set of deliverables ? How many items does the store stock ?
Are they all available for online purchasing ?
I'm sure you will get loads of help on specific issues but this really is a large project. (I've been doing large projects like this for the last 10 years and make a good living from them. )

Hobbes

cddc3 wrote:

I'm posted this to get some help so if people like kbannon are just gonna criticise just bugger off wit all respect this defeatest attitude is not the kinda help i was lookin for..
Thanks for your opinion but no thanks

No he is serious. You are way out of your league. Generally you can find sites that do this for you but what you are asking is probably realistically out of the scope of man hours for one person.

If you are to do such a system, you shouldn't even be working on the website at this stage. You should be planning the arcitecture, etc.

WizZard

Hobbes wrote:

If you are to do such a system, you shouldn't even be working on the website at this stage. You should be planning the arcitecture, etc.

This is what you should be learning in college/wherever.

For a project of this scale you must plan, plan and plan again (this includes all aspects inc. UML etc). You can't just sit down and code and hope it all comes together.
You should have a set of deliverables to work on.

How big is the project plan? Have you identified deliverables? Does the shop(your employer) know what they want? Do you know how to cost a project such as this? How many hours do you expect it to take you? Have you factored in proper system testing?

Honestly, a question like

Do i do this using a database and how???

seems to point out that your skills for developing this site/project are woefully inadequate, never mind the skills it takes to actually architect the system properly.

This is not abuse toward you by the way. It's just plain facts.

cousin_borat

Notwithstanding that you lack the skills yourself it would take a team of skilled people a few weeks to complete this. I would go the LAMP route myself

Jim Kernsey

LAMP is the best way to go.

I'd use osCommerce.

I plan to use osCommerce this summer, i've never used it before, i haven't even used PHP before!

I understand this will be a steep learning curve, but considering that i've developed an EJB based onlinestore before its not insurmountable. I'm not trying to be funny but developing a pretty graphical html website is a different ball game to building an eCommerce site!

If you still want to make this store, set yourself a realistic time line, i.e. more than six months or alternatively get help in.


Cheers

JK

muckwarrior

Jim Kernsey wrote:

developing a pretty graphical html website is a different ball game to building an eCommerce site!

That would actually probably account for no more than 5-10% of the work involved!
Btw what exactly is bis? If it's a computer science related degree then I'm pretty suprised you so clueless after three years.

Seth Brundle

muckwarrior wrote:

That would actually probably account for no more than 5-10% of the work involved!

I presume you mean the graphical end of it!

muckwarrior wrote:

Btw what exactly is bis? If it's a computer science related degree then I'm pretty suprised you so clueless after three years.

Business Information Systems I presume

muckwarrior

kbannon wrote:

I presume you mean the graphical end of it!

Business Information Systems I presume

Aye.
Thought it might be that, wasn't sure though.

Jim Kernsey

kbannon wrote:

Business Information Systems I presume

I did a similar BIS course, TBH i learnt more in fourth year than the three years previous put together!

The course is typically a mix of business and software programming.

tends to stay at a higher level of programming and avoid stuff like designing compilers or programming robotics

rsynnott

cddc3 wrote:

I'm posted this to get some help so if people like kbannon are just gonna criticise just bugger off wit all respect this defeatest attitude is not the kinda help i was lookin for..
Thanks for your opinion but no thanks

Really, this is no easy task. You should do some simpler DB apps with no risk of Horrible Things Happening if they're compromised first, then come back to it. If you do this, and anything goes wrong, you're very suable. And if you make even quite a small mistake, things will go wrong.

Recently had to do maintainance work on a large web-app with commercially sensitive info behind it who's highly paid original developer evidently had never heard of SQL injection.

swiss

i'm askin how would u connect ur online shoppin website to a db

Oh dear.

I know this has all been said, but what you're proposing is quite complex. I mentioned, along with various other people, the LAMP platform, which frankly is probably the most straightforward not to mention cost effective way of developing a website in this manner. It is not easy, and you would have to be familiar with a very wide array of technologies. I know I could not touch something like this without being in a team and having a significant amount of time available for research. I'm just finishing an honours degree in computing.

To answer your specific question, there are a number of technologies that would allow you to persist data obtained from a website. Perhaps the most popular and easiest method is to use JDBC, which is a Java API included with Suns jdk, probably since 1.3 or even earlier. There are other technologies used, such as EJB, but this is quite a complex beast that I would not touch quite yet. JDO is another alternative. If you're feeling lucky and/or adventurous you could go with a persistence layer mapping technology like Hibernate (http://www.hibernate.org) which is what I'm using for my final year project.

Now bear in mind that data persistence is going to be the very least of your worries. You need to be familiar with a number of technologies and platforms. I'm going to assume you're familiar with the LAMP platform, if you don't you need to start research. Personally though I wouldn't develop on a Linux OS because I'm not familiar enough with them.

Other than that, phew, I'm not sure where to start. Obviously you need to have some programming skills with languages such as Java or C++, XML (for application configuration), PHP, SQL - particularly the MySQL dialect if you're using that RDBMS, JSP or ASP and probably a scripting language like PERL for form validation. Oh and HTML, but that will be a doddle compared to the others. You'll find that tying them together in a single application is going to be a nightmare though.

My personal advice is to tell this supermarket that you won't be able to deliver a fully functional system because you won't be able to deliver this in a few months, and you won't need this hanging over you in your final year. However, you could scale down something like this and use it in a final year project. That way, you can put the skills you will learn to good use for future reference, and perhaps have a few teammates to balance the workload.

rsynnott

swiss wrote:

Perhaps the most popular and easiest method is to use JDBC, which is a Java API included with Suns jdk, probably since 1.3 or even earlier.

1.1

swiss wrote:

Other than that, phew, I'm not sure where to start. Obviously you need to have some programming skills with languages such as Java or C++, XML (for application configuration), PHP, SQL - particularly the MySQL dialect if you're using that RDBMS, JSP or ASP and probably a scripting language like PERL for form validation. Oh and HTML, but that will be a doddle compared to the others. You'll find that tying them together in a single application is going to be a nightmare though.

In fairness, he could do it all in PHP with an MySQL DB; no need for heterogenity. Making something that looks like it works shouldn't be too difficult. Making something that actually works, reliably and safely, that's a different story.