Simple Ecommerce

rdmedia

Hi,

I'm just starting development for a basic e-commerce application and will be using Fuel.
It will be paypal standard working for now. I notice you have a site example on your site that has a shop.
Is that done inside fuel?

I only ask as there's some reference to a shop module in code and user guide, and i wondered if you might be considering releasing it as open source or even a paid for extra?

admin

That's a great question and a definite need for both the community. We've actually considered doing a blog post about it because there is a module we created for a project that we were considering either opening up or selling (not sure at this point). However, we haven't had the time to completely tackle it so it's cleaned up and a little more universal.

rdmedia

Thanks, maybe you could give some direction on the best way to implement customer registration/accounts. Should i use the fuel admin or build own admin pages?
As far as categories/products listing for the front of the site we can use existing help for that.

admin

I would create a separate user accounts login for the ecommerce side of things since the fuel_users table is really just for people interacting with the admin. For what we did, we created an "advanced module", similar to the blog in the sense that it had several models, views and controllers bundled under a "shop" directory (e.g. accounts, products, categories, transactions...etc). I hope that helps point you in the right direction.

rdmedia

Yes it does, many thanks

rdmedia

I have a question please.

If i have a single view file eg. shop.php which is taking it's data from a model shop_model.php set up as a simple module. It works great in both admin and browsing to /shop on the front end.

I want this to be an advanced module so have followed user guide tute and have config files in place plus available admin module in Fuel Config. When i browse to /shop now i get a 404 error.

I'm thinking there's more i need to do, looked at the blog module and that has a lot more in place. Do i need a controller or can i still use opt-in controller method? Can you give me an idea of the minimum files i need to create as i'm not sure how much of the blog module is necessary for what i am trying to achieve.

Your help would be appreciated.

admin

The opt-in controller only works within your application directory. In this case, you would need to create a controller (e.g. modules/shop/controllers/products.php would be http://localhost/shop/products). To prevent the 404 error, you need to create a shop controller (e.g. modules/shop/controllers/shop.php)

rdmedia

Thanks, now I'm beginning to understand the advanced module a little better. Onwards!

rdmedia

In the blog module the table names have the prefix fuel_ can you tell me how the prefix is added in the models/config ive looked for some time and can't figure it out. If i add a prefix to my own tables the sql fails with table not found.

admin

The fuel/modules/blog/config/blog.php configuration file has $config['tables'] (near the bottom), that maps table names. That file get's used in the base_module_model to figure out what table the model is dealing with (if specified in config).

meekgeek

I would love to see how to do this in a tutorial!

admin

Yes. There are a few that we would like to do eventually and that is one of them unless someone else gets to it first