More developer questions

[moopa]

Hi all.
I am currently testing the system to see if we can use it for our bespoke needs.

To quickly summarize, i wish to have a base set of products as the standard package provides,
i then want to have product views (such as left side, right side, front and back.
Each of these views will have a base set of constants (editable area width and height and extra cost if the are used).

A user will select a base product and have the ability to add text and imagery to each of the views, save their order with this information attached and reload it again to customize perhaps for a new order later on. I also want to have our own designs pre-made for users to edit in much the same way as a bespoke one created by the user (again using a base product with custom views). Eventually, i want each user to be able to make their bespoke items visible on their own page to sell.

Just to point out that i will very likely use the API alone for the front end with the exception of perhaps the cart page. I will want to load this data into a flash front end via xml.

Someone already suggested created a ProductDetails table and somehow linking this information to the product table but i wanted to get some other feedback as i have now looked at some of the admin tools for the swatches for example and wondered if i could do this using the stuff built it.

All thoughts on how you think it would be best to achieve this would be most welcome at this point.

Best regards,

Dave

[AbleMods]

Your needs are pretty specialized. The only way I could see them being accomplished would be the custom table route. Along that same route would be a highly customized BuyProductDialog user control.

Swatches would only accomplish a portion of your need. A swatch is a graphical representation of a single choice. From what you've described, there are multiple choices to be made. Using multiple swatch selections might bring you closer to your need, however your ability to manage page layout with swatches would be extremely limited.

Even using swatches, you're going to want to display the final representation of your product to your visitor. Since you're "constructing" that final representation on-the-fly, you're still going to need the custom code to accomodate the various combinations possible.

So the good news is the flexibility of the AC7 .Net programming gives you the ability to accomplish what you need. The bad news is you have quite a bit of programming ahead of you.

[moopa]

Your needs are pretty specialized. The only way I could see them being accomplished would be the custom table route. Along that same route would be a highly customized BuyProductDialog user control.

Swatches would only accomplish a portion of your need. A swatch is a graphical representation of a single choice. From what you've described, there are multiple choices to be made. Using multiple swatch selections might bring you closer to your need, however your ability to manage page layout with swatches would be extremely limited.

Even using swatches, you're going to want to display the final representation of your product to your visitor. Since you're "constructing" that final representation on-the-fly, you're still going to need the custom code to accomodate the various combinations possible.

So the good news is the flexibility of the AC7 .Net programming gives you the ability to accomplish what you need. The bad news is you have quite a bit of programming ahead of you.

Thanks very much for the response. I have started to build a custom table. I think i will be ok as long as i can somehow add additional costs to the price when it comes to adding to the basket. I guess i need to look at the add to cart area of the api for this bit?

Thanks again

Dave

[AbleMods]

Try looking into the AC7 kit functionality - might be a good route to explore. That would give you the flexibility to still control the user interface but take advantage of the kitting to handle costs and cart functionality. In other words, build your own kit visitor-side interface instead of using Ables.

Then you're only modifying behind-the-scenes code and not the core cart functionality.

[moopa]

Try looking into the AC7 kit functionality - might be a good route to explore. That would give you the flexibility to still control the user interface but take advantage of the kitting to handle costs and cart functionality. In other words, build your own kit visitor-side interface instead of using Ables.

Then you're only modifying behind-the-scenes code and not the core cart functionality.

Thanks for the pointers. Just so i understand you, do you mean to use the kit functions to make extras and then flag my product as having a kit extra if they have added custom images to it? Then i can simply say hasKitExtra (as an example) and the cart will add the additional cost for me?

Thank you again

Dave

[AbleMods]

Thanks for the pointers. Just so i understand you, do you mean to use the kit functions to make extras and then flag my product as having a kit extra if they have added custom images to it? Then i can simply say hasKitExtra (as an example) and the cart will add the additional cost for me?

Sort of. Your situation sounds as if kits would work fine as-is, you just lack the graphical aspect of the user interface. If you could manipulate the visitor-side interface for kits to meet your graphics needs, the rest of AC7 (order processing, shipments etc) would probably work fine for you unmodified.
A custom user control that could display kit parameters in the graphical form you require would be a good way to go.

[moopa]

Sort of. Your situation sounds as if kits would work fine as-is, you just lack the graphical aspect of the user interface. If you could manipulate the visitor-side interface for kits to meet your graphics needs, the rest of AC7 (order processing, shipments etc) would probably work fine for you unmodified. A custom user control that could display kit parameters in the graphical form you require would be a good way to go.

To get an idea of the schema, i have put together a simple XML file that would be returned from the datasource as a product. I will load this into flash. <userImage> and <userText> can be populated by the user (with images they upload and text they type in) and also we wish to make our own themes using a base product (product1 in this case) and allow the user to load these designs into the flash app. Based on this, do you think the kit options are still the way to go? Thank you again.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<product xmlns="http://mysite.com/api/" productID="1" colorSkuID="1" baseCost="20.0" thumbURL="product1Thmb.png">
	
	<productView ViewID="1" title="Front" description="This is the front view of the product">
		<baseImageURL>product1FrontView.png</baseImageURL>
		<canAddText>true</canAddText>
		<canAddImages>true</canAddImages>
		<printCost>5.00</printCost>
		<userImage>myDesign.jpg</userImage>
		<userText>Happy Fathers Day</userText>
	</productView>
	
	<productView ViewID="2" title="Side" description="This is the side view of the product">
		<viewImageURL>product1SideView.png</viewImageURL>
		<canAddText>true</canAddText>
		<canAddImages>true</canAddImages>
		<printCost>5.00</printCost>
		<userImage>mySideDesign.jpg</userImage>
		<userText>Love Michael</userText>
	</productView>
	
	<productView ViewID="3" title="Back" description="This is the back view of the product">
		<viewImageURL>product1BackView.png</viewImageURL>
		<canAddText>true</canAddText>
		<canAddImages>true</canAddImages>
		<printCost>5.00</printCost>
		<userImage></userImage>
		<userText></userText>
	</productView>
	
</product>

[AbleMods]

I appreciate the sample XML, but I really can't effectively answer your question as to whether it's ultimately going to work. You're just going to have to get deep into it and see how it goes.

[moopa]

No problem.
I am delving in now. I will let you know how i get on!

All the best,

Dave