Techinical question: custom site registration application

[Chris Willenbrock]

I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is technically possible, and what the
best way of going about it might be.

I'm a developer for a site that uses the ShopSite 7 package to sell, among
other things, memberships to the site. I have my own database for site
members. This is a completely different entity than the ShopSite user
registration and must be maintained separately.

I wish to design a process by which I can create user accounts in my site's
membership database when the membership item is purchased from the store.
If someone comes to the site and buys a t-shirt, I don't want to know about
it...but they buy a membership item (or a t-shirt and a membership together,
whatever) I want to be able to access their order information to know
payment is confirmed, and somehow bolt that up to a site registration
process of my own where they can enter a username, password, etc.

This process must be real time, so when someone orders a membership from the
store, they're able to create and start using their account on the site
immediately.

So I need some kind of hook into the order process. I don't know if there's
any mechanism in the ShopSite software currently to facilitate this kind of
thing, so any insight any of you all might have would be much appreciated

I was thinking maybe a process by which they enter their desired
username/password/etc into a record in my site's membership database, and
then get forwarded on to complete the sale. Then I need to be able to read
into the database somehow to confirm the payment process was completed.

This would be easy if ShopSite could kick out order information for that
item into a file format I can read. Any ideas?



- Chris

[loren_d_c]

Here is a link to the online documentation for the Order API feature of
ShopSite PRO (feature not available in Manager or Starter):

http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.0/en-US/ ... r.api.html

This does not give you access to the ShopSite orders databases but it
will hand off all order information to a custom cgi program of your own
making at the time the order is completed.

-Loren


Chris Willenbrock wrote:

I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is technically possible, and what the
best way of going about it might be.

I'm a developer for a site that uses the ShopSite 7 package to sell, among
other things, memberships to the site. I have my own database for site
members. This is a completely different entity than the ShopSite user
registration and must be maintained separately.

I wish to design a process by which I can create user accounts in my site's
membership database when the membership item is purchased from the store.
If someone comes to the site and buys a t-shirt, I don't want to know about
it...but they buy a membership item (or a t-shirt and a membership together,
whatever) I want to be able to access their order information to know
payment is confirmed, and somehow bolt that up to a site registration
process of my own where they can enter a username, password, etc.

This process must be real time, so when someone orders a membership from the
store, they're able to create and start using their account on the site
immediately.

So I need some kind of hook into the order process. I don't know if there's
any mechanism in the ShopSite software currently to facilitate this kind of
thing, so any insight any of you all might have would be much appreciated

I was thinking maybe a process by which they enter their desired
username/password/etc into a record in my site's membership database, and
then get forwarded on to complete the sale. Then I need to be able to read
into the database somehow to confirm the payment process was completed.

This would be easy if ShopSite could kick out order information for that
item into a file format I can read. Any ideas?



- Chris

[Chris Willenbrock]

"Loren" <loren_d_c@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cbdl26$plv$1@support.shopsite.com...

Here is a link to the online documentation for the Order API feature of
ShopSite PRO (feature not available in Manager or Starter):

http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.0/en-US/ ... r.api.html

This does not give you access to the ShopSite orders databases but it
will hand off all order information to a custom cgi program of your own
making at the time the order is completed.

Excellent..Thank you very much. I managed to miss this after looking
through both the documentation and the administration screens. I think I
need another cup of coffee.

I'm not much of a "real" programmer...I write in web development languages
like PHP and Cold Fusion so I wish I could call such a script instead of C
or Perl CGI. Come to think of it...does it matter what it is that I'm
calling? I was thinking I'd have to whip something together in PERL to
interface with my MySQL database, etc...but if I could just specify a .php
file there as my Custom CGI Filename and work with the POST data there, it
would be much easier for me to develop.

Another question I have is how I go about setting up a development
environment. I'm not intimately familiar with the way ShopSite is licensed
and how that effects the way it's installed on the server, but would I be
able to install this easily enough on a development server without having to
buy another license? I suppose that would open a whole new can of worms,
like how to go about payment processing without actually processing
payments, etc.

Thanks for your help


- Chris

[loren_d_c]

By default on most systems the PHP settings are such that you cannot
execute a PHP script directly from another program (you can redirect to
one or 'include' it in another PHP script, but that is not what the
Order API does), so unless you know how to reconfigure it to allow for
cgi execution of PHP scripts, then you probably won't be able to do
that. Perl is not too much different than PHP, so it shouldn't be a big
jump for you. It doesn't really matter what language you use as long as
it can read in cgi name-value pair parameters and be exec'd by another
process.

You can use the same ShopSite license for a development license on a
different machine. If you are not familiar with installing ShopSite, you
could contact your ShopSite reseller and see if they can assist with
that. They may also be able to provide you with a demo license you could
use instead.

Each payment gateway has their own method of running test transactions,
for some you have to change the host that ShopSite is sending the
transactions to, for others you just have to set your account on the
gateway side to test mode, for others you have to do both. Then they
usually have certain test card numbers to use to get approved test
transactions. Refer to the gateway's instructions or contact the
gateway's tech support department if you can't find instructions.

-Loren


Chris Willenbrock wrote:

"Loren" <loren_d_c@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cbdl26$plv$1@support.shopsite.com...

Here is a link to the online documentation for the Order API feature of
ShopSite PRO (feature not available in Manager or Starter):

http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.0/en-US/ ... r.api.html

This does not give you access to the ShopSite orders databases but it
will hand off all order information to a custom cgi program of your own
making at the time the order is completed.


Excellent..Thank you very much. I managed to miss this after looking
through both the documentation and the administration screens. I think I
need another cup of coffee.

I'm not much of a "real" programmer...I write in web development languages
like PHP and Cold Fusion so I wish I could call such a script instead of C
or Perl CGI. Come to think of it...does it matter what it is that I'm
calling? I was thinking I'd have to whip something together in PERL to
interface with my MySQL database, etc...but if I could just specify a .php
file there as my Custom CGI Filename and work with the POST data there, it
would be much easier for me to develop.

Another question I have is how I go about setting up a development
environment. I'm not intimately familiar with the way ShopSite is licensed
and how that effects the way it's installed on the server, but would I be
able to install this easily enough on a development server without having to
buy another license? I suppose that would open a whole new can of worms,
like how to go about payment processing without actually processing
payments, etc.

Thanks for your help


- Chris