Extracting Zen Cart Functionality

[jkw]

Folks,

While Zen Cart has an impressive set of functionality, it has the disadvantage that it is an "all or nothing" proposition. If you are going to use Zen Cart, it seems you must work entirely inside its framework. Basically, you use it to build your entire site, rather than integrating its functionality into an existing site.

I have my own preexisting sites that I have no intention of discarding, but I would like to be able to make use of Zen Cart to "add on" shopping functionality to one or more of these sites. I've been analyzing the code base with an eye toward "extracting" or making use of the cart/checkout/shipping/payment capabilities without using the entire elaborate template system and catalog displays. What I'm trying to figure out is this: what is the minimal set of include files which I would have to bring in from a Zen Cart installation within or alongside my existing site to support the basic functionality of displaying a cart summary and a working "Add Item to Cart" form?

As an example, if I simply wanted to bring in the sidebox display of the tpl_shopping_cart.php code file, to show the brief listing of the contents of my cart, what *else* would I have to include in my existing site to make it work properly?

On the other hand, if I wanted to drop the content of one of my own left sidebar divs into a "sidebox" template for a ZC display, would I break anything in the process? If the content is nothing but standards-compliant XHTML, it seems to me that nothing should happen, but I can't be sure.

There must be a lot of other developers out there who are in our position: we have existing processes and methodologies for building our sites, but would like to leverage the back-end functionality of Zen Cart to add e-Commerce capabilities to those sites. I've been searching the Wiki and the forums for information about this, but haven't found anyone else discussing it. Surely somebody else has at least *wanted* to do this in the past. Has anyone done any work on "widgetizing" or "wrapping" the display and functionality of ZC to make it possible to drop it into an existing site?

Many thanks for any feedback!

regards,
Jim

[jkw]

Folks,

While Zen Cart has an impressive set of functionality, it has the disadvantage that it is an "all or nothing" proposition. If you are going to use Zen Cart, it seems you must work entirely inside its framework. Basically, you use it to build your entire site, rather than integrating its functionality into an existing site.

I have my own preexisting sites that I have no intention of discarding, but I would like to be able to make use of Zen Cart to "add on" shopping functionality to one or more of these sites. I've been analyzing the code base with an eye toward "extracting" or making use of the cart/checkout/shipping/payment capabilities without using the entire elaborate template system and catalog displays. What I'm trying to figure out is this: what is the minimal set of include files which I would have to bring in from a Zen Cart installation within or alongside my existing site to support the basic functionality of displaying a cart summary and a working "Add Item to Cart" form?

As an example, if I simply wanted to bring in the sidebox display of the tpl_shopping_cart.php code file, to show the brief listing of the contents of my cart, what *else* would I have to include in my existing site to make it work properly?

On the other hand, if I wanted to drop the content of one of my own left sidebar divs into a "sidebox" template for a ZC display, would I break anything in the process? If the content is nothing but standards-compliant XHTML, it seems to me that nothing should happen, but I can't be sure.

There must be a lot of other developers out there who are in our position: we have existing processes and methodologies for building our sites, but would like to leverage the back-end functionality of Zen Cart to add e-Commerce capabilities to those sites. I've been searching the Wiki and the forums for information about this, but haven't found anyone else discussing it. Surely somebody else has at least *wanted* to do this in the past. Has anyone done any work on "widgetizing" or "wrapping" the display and functionality of ZC to make it possible to drop it into an existing site?

Many thanks for any feedback!

regards,
Jim

[Kim]

The short answer? Nope.

There is a lot more to the Zen Cart shopping cart than just the buy now buttons and you can't dissect bits and pieces without breaking other functionality.

[Merlinpa1969]

the problem with dropping pieces into another site is the session

zens sessions are Proprietary.

[ojohnm]

I'm intersted in basically the same thing as JKW. So can anyone provide clear answers to the following questions:
1) Can anyone elaborate some on how to best integrate ZC into an existing site? FOR EXAMPLE, maybe the Zen experts would say to organize your site in a way that the "shopping" part of it was ZC and in its own subdirectory within the existing site, and then the rest of the site would stay exactly the way it is.

2) Is ZC really even intended for web developers who already have an existing methodology of building their sites with very specific uses of languages and protocols to generate their 'pages'? For example... on all our sites there is only a single top level page and the entire contents of the pages (xhtml and everything) is generated dynamically with PHP on the server. We don't have seperate html files for every single page on the site. The point is, there's a whole 'stack' in place for how we build and deploy our sites and we want to know how we can utilize ZC for the 'shopping' part of a site without having ZC take over the entire site.

3) In regard to the proper use of web standards technolgies, there's supposed to be a clear seperation of the layers.... ie, structure, content, presentation, and functionality. So with that in mind, what do the expert Zenners have to say about that? If ZC is about standards, then why can't content (the product content) and functionality (the shopping cart, checkout, and etc.) be extracted from the presentation and document structure layers like is supposed to be the case according to good web-dev practices?

4) In the open-source and standards world there's scores of JS, PHP, CSS, and etc libraries to use in your web sites that provide functionality and methods to generate content. So why can't ZC be used in much the same manner? Why can't the cart environment and the functionality of shopping, and the functionality of generating product pages from databases be seperated from the part of ZC that is the doc structure(html layout) and presentation (the CSS styling)?

5) Finally, is the lack of discussion in the forums on this subject simply due to the Zen developers and maintainers just shutting down any meaningful discussion of the topic? Or is it because people like us just end up realizing that ZC isn't going to work for them and they just go away? Is ZC really just intended for those who don't care to build and control their own web dev environment and so they are just fine with using ZC to be the technological basis of their site?

I worked hard to ask these questions in a way that if answered clearly can help people looking at ZC in this way. So please do us the favor and respond in a meaningful manner.

Thanks in advance! John M

[DrByte]

ojohnm,

1. Your example (run store from subdirectory) is a common approach embraced by many desiring such an end result. While there are other approaches, this is what will be required if you choose to not use Zen Cart "as" your site.

2. Zen Cart is exactly that already:

with very specific uses of languages and protocols to generate their 'pages'? For example... on all our sites there is only a single top level page and the entire contents of the pages (xhtml and everything) is generated dynamically with PHP on the server. We don't have seperate html files for every single page on the site. The point is, there's a whole 'stack' in place for how we build and deploy

3 & 4 are basically the same question, so the same answer applies to both:
"content and functionality" are separatable insomuch as you are not left with hard-coded intelligence entirely intermingled with output logic.
Running it as a server-side-includes resource is not within the scope of features in the current release.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but the way your questions are worded suggests you haven't really dug into Zen Cart very far, and that perhaps you are only in evaluation mode. That's okay. I would encourage you to install Zen Cart and give it a fair shot by setting up a site and see how it works. You'll find it very similar to the "scores of JS, PHP, CSS, and etc libraries to use in your web sites that provide functionality and methods to generate content" which you referred to.

5. Any "lack of discussion" is not a result of "devs shutting down" discussion ... because a lack of discussion leaves no discussion to "shut down."

Instead, it would be more accurate to suggest that folks have found that the most effective way to build a site and utilize Zen Cart is to use Zen Cart *as* the site/core/infrastructure, and base their site from that foundation.

While it's possible to expand functionality and adapt it in different methods similar to what your post suggests you desire, it will require advanced comprehension of PHP coding, session management, authentication sharing and security matters, and more.

At the present time, the "splitting off" of functionality to be used by external systems is within the scope of features intended for the current release of Zen Cart. Note that there is a published roadmap which details upcoming plans, including but not limited to further separation of content vs display, as well as additional OOP and modularization capability. There are a number of great plans ahead for the 1.x series (ref roadmap again for high-level overview), as well as the 2.x series (no roadmap published for this yet).

[ojohnm]

Thanks for the great reply! Let me respond to a couple of points you make:

1) Where you said "Zen Cart is exactly that already", I realize that. The point I was making is that we have our specific implementation of dynamic generation of web pages/content. In a manner our pages are our own unique template system analageous to ZC, and so I was trying to say that it would be a very big deal to 'scrap that' in lieu of ZC template system for our entire site. I'm sure that like us, others have worked very hard on their site technology and don't want to throw it away for a completely different system.

2) I have installed and played with ZC and its templates. However, for me to develop a 'typical' web page of let's say product content, but within my dev framework, it would take me a couple of hours because I know my framework inside and out (I helped build it). In contrast, to produce the same 'page' using ZC's template system, I'm now working in foriegn territory and the same job is going to take 10x longer because I have to do everything ZC's way and figure that out and I'm talking specifically about content generation and presentation.

3) It appears to me that a large portion of ZC's code base is about the templates and generating content, compared to the amount of code that actually represents the functionalities of 'shopping'. Furthermore, alot of that code is to accomodate those who do not know how to develop web content themselves and so they need the "put your header here and place your message there' kind of thing. Sort of like a wyswig html editor for those who can't write xml themselves. In a way ZC becomes kind of a web site development IDE for those who want a 'store' but can't develop web sites. This versus providing pre-built shopping cart functionality and support libs for those who do build their own sites. I want the latter.

Bottom line: I've reviewed enough of ZC to know that it is totally possible to seperate these layers and I could even do it given I had enough time (which of course I don't). ZC could have been developed this way if the vision for that would have been there from the beginning. It sounds to me by your last comment, that maybe there is some vision for this in the future releases. So maybe we could start some official ZC wiki topic and/or discussion forum all about this. I know I would be happy to help and so would others.

Thanks again DrByte, your points were a big help!

[Kim]

In a way ZC becomes kind of a web site development IDE for those who want a 'store' but can't develop web sites. This versus providing pre-built shopping cart functionality and support libs for those who do build their own sites. I want the latter.

Sorry, but Zen Cart is not designed to be the latter.

[Mike123acc]

Sorry, but Zen Cart is not designed to be the latter.

And I think that is a real shame. Zen cart is missing a huge opportunity to be something very special. If I were a developer, there is a missing product I would love to create.

What I mean is, Zen cart is not nice looking enough, easily editable enough, versatile enough to be a serious (compared to many modern sites nowadays - looked at some of the Soholaunch examples on the forum) competitor to some other site making software.

And it is not adaptable enough to allow to fit into an existing website and use it's cart functionality. I get the impression a lot of people are just accepting the 'look' of Zen Cart to have it's functionality.

There's got to ba a smart developer out there that could take OSCommerce / Zen Cart and make it Cart only, or connect it to a good sitebuiler. That would be an awesome product.