Curious to know if anyone developed Yii shopping cart websites… the showcase section lists only simple websites and i wanted to know if Yii was ever used on more complex sites.
Curious to know if anyone developed Yii shopping cart websites… the showcase section lists only simple websites and i wanted to know if Yii was ever used on more complex sites.
I was thinking the same.
I am in the middle of deciding which frameworks to use for a new shopping cart that I am going to develop with Yii as my preference.
Well it looks like we are in the same boat.
I was looking at different frameworks. Started off with Codeigniter and went through all the tutorials. Then i discovered Yii and i am leaning towards Yii because it is apparently faster, php 5 only, more secure and has a bunch of other nice features.
However developing a shoping cart from scratch can be a big project. Unfortunately there are no libraries for shopping carts for yii yet.
My other alternative is to find a php5 shopping cart which is written in MVC format and then rip out all the features i don't need and eventually convert it to Yii framework once i am 100% familiar with the code.
Only PHP5 shopping cars i found were OPENCART and ZEUSCART. Opencart is done with MVC so it's pretty nice and i'm going to take a look at more of its features to see if it has all that i need. ZeusCart seems to be more powerful on paper and its apparently Php5 but it's not MVC really and it's using smarty templates which is a big turn off for me. There's also LiteCommerce, but it's not a free poduct and development on it has been stopped i think… i'm not even sure if it's done in MVC fashion.
I have not started on this project as yet.
The shopping cart I am going to work on is very customised to this given project.
Also, I am only new to Yii - still learning.
how customized is this going to be? if you don't mind me asking… what specific features will it have?
i sent you a private message actually about this.
I am also interested in a yii-powered shopping cart app, have you guys checked Magento? A e-commerce app by Zend Framework (so of course,it's MVC), which gets lots of buzz recently.
I am interested in this topic. I have been using OSCommerce and ZenCart. Both worked pretty well but I think they are a little bit overblown for many projects i.e, a mom and papa shop with less than 100 items or a specialty shop that specialize only in a very limited amount of items.
When I have time, I will check Magento out. It will be interesting to port it over to Yii. I am pretty impressed by Yii's speed and performance.
I have been thinking of a designing a very lightweight Shopping Cart software than can help small business owners such a farmer, etc, that is fast to deploy with low or zero technical maintenance.
i haven't tried running magento but based on what i have read it's just as bloated as ZenCart and OSCcommerce. It's also very very slow.
I ran ZenCart cart and found that it is sluggish and has too many different features that are not always necessary. ZenCart is not written in PHP5 and it doesn't use MVC. Version 2.0 development kind of stalled as well.
The problem with pre-built big-name shopping carts is that they try to be everything for everyone. This results in a crazy number of features that most people do not need and those features negatively impact performance.
Ideally a shopping cart should be completely modular and bare-bones. Core module should just have a list of categories, products, pagination controls, items basket and that's it. Then additional optional modules could be added for payment processing, shipping estimates, customer management, mailing lists, estimation options, discounts, promotions, accounting tasks, layouts… etc.
It's the only way to end up with a robust and fast shopping cart that can have as much features as you want and not be bloated at the same time.
Litecommerce 2.2 has tried to go that route, but without paying the $109 USD fee i can't say if it's good or not. I don't think it uses MVC architecture and its designed for php4 compatibility, which leaves a lot to be desired again.
Now if only there was a basic shopping cart optional library for YII, it would kill all the other frameworks for sure.
By the way for those of you who are really interested to develop a shopping cart add-on for Yii, i wouldn't mind paying for its development and/or doing basic core front-end mock-up (the V part of the MVC)
I haven't tried ripping apart OpenCart or Zeuscart and porting some features to Yii, but i don't have as much time as i wish i did to spend on this.
Can we collaborate and create one?
Let me know if anyone is interested to join me to create a multi-store cart. Release it as open source Yii cart. I am sure qiang will give some directions once we get started.
i can do the VIEW part of the MVC… and structural flow of the controller part.
We need someone to do the model / controller parts. 
I am not a professional developer but I would contribute some time on some extensions or modules. I have zero experience on Shopping cart development although I did change lots of codes and added some extensions for OSCommerce.
menatep that a good lot you are ready to bring in.I can contribute to model and controller. Same here, I have some experience with OSC only. And I am brand new with Yii as well.
I like moho's suggestion of module and extension. How about the core eComm remain a module.
Sounds like we have a team already. I think at least one member in this topic can be a project leader. But I have absolute no experience in developing such a computer project. My formal academic training is only in economics, management and marketing. Otherwise, I would take most responsibilities in doing this. Will be lots of fun.
moho I am in
I'm going to take a look at opencart and opencart zero and see how featured those carts are. In the mean time maybe we should come up with a list of CORE FEATURES that the shopping cart extension for Yii should have.
I recently moved to St. Louis and I am moving to new place this week again. At the same time I am looking for work here. By that, I will be little slow for a week or two.
Where are both of you located?
The are many open source e-commerce packages. The one I am inclined to is with following major features, targeted more towards Digital Marketing. I started this with CakePHP, with an Russian freelancer. Later I dropped when I could not afford.
Multi-tenancy shopping cart
Feeds input and auto mapping to unified catalog
Feeds output to market channels
Cart abandonment issues
Slim Catalogs
However we can start with simple one and plan to meet the above objectives.
Definitely, at some point of time I will be able to manage and lead. At this time I am going through some personal issues and will limit my extend.
I have 16 years of IT, mostly with Financial systems, integrations, automation, architecture, DB deign etc., most with fortune 500s. I have experience with my own import business and retail stores (B&M and online). Which are not operational now. All my IT money got dumped there. Lost but learned 
Web development is quite something new for me. I am into it because I am looking to make money while I am asleeeeep. I have done quite a few intranet web applications. Done some websites for friends and families only so far.
foe#1,
I am in Southern Mass. I am a full time business Merger&Acquisition professional. However, IT just happens to be my serious hobby. I just cannot tolerate talking to my IT people and wait for an answer.
That said, I am not capable to handle a decent IT project.
There will be many core features to be demanded. I would say we can develop a skeleton project first and build from there. With the skeleton project, we can add and delete items and check out (paypal interface or whatever).
I agree with you on the slim catalogue part. Most projects have become so bloated overtime and people got lost.
Foe,
The features you listed are starting to remind me of a full featured shopping cart already.
The simpler things are the better. While all those extra features are nice, they should be optional add-ons to the core project.
The core of the cart could have these essentials:
PRODUCTS: ADD/EDIT/DELETE (With unlimited multi-image upload capability… either via Uploadify,SWFUpload, or something similar)
CATEGORIES: ADD/EDIT/DELETE
CART MANAGEMENT: ADD ITEM / EDIT CART CONTENTS / CHECKOUT
ORDER PROCESSING: That i'll need to investgate how it works with OpenCart and OpenCart0.
Just wondering whether there has been anymore work put into this and how it is going