I am in the middle of creating a new product_type book for ZC 1.5. with the working title "bookx", so from here on "bookx" refers to my yet to be created new product type book. It will be for ZC version 1.5. only I do not intend to adapt it to any lower ZC versions.
To get started I have downloaded the last version of the add-on which this thread was created for (the "moku" product type book, from here on "moku book") and since I didn't understand very well how it worked, I decided to start from scratch. This is the old plugin I looked at:
Sammirah mentions a product_type book already provided for ZC 1.5. on which one could build, but I have been searching all over and I couldn't find anything.
Furthermore this ZC wiki post mentions a product_type book, but I couldn't find anything about that either. Seeing that the documentation says it's for ZC 1.2 it would probably too old anyway.
Even though I do not plan to build onto "moku book", I may try to provide an import function, so that data already entered for "moku book" doesn't have to be completely re-entered for use with "bookx". That way orders and other references to existing products wouldn't have to change. That's the theory, I don't know how well it will work :-)
However, since I do not currently use "moku book", it would be great if someone interested in this conversion feature could provide some Mysql data containing the tables added by "moku book". It really just needs one or two actual entries per table, so that I can see the table structure and the kind of data stored there.
Here's what I am planning for "bookx":
the "product model" field will be used for ISBN / EAN
Additional data fields provided by "bookx":
subtitle
no. of pages
printing (color)
binding type
size
volume no. (for series)
publishing date
publisher
imprint / sublabel
series
authors (multiple possible)
genre (multiple possible)
book condition
Of those, the following data items will be managed in a separate table and can be assigned to a product through a drop-down.
They will have the fields listed in (parentheses). "Language_specific" fields can be entered separately for as many languages as are installed in the shop.
printing (language_specific_description, sort_order_for_dropdown)
binding type (language_specific_description, sort_order_for_dropdown)
book condition (language_specific_description, sort_order_for_dropdown)
imprint / sublabel (language_specific_name, sort_order_for_dropdown, sublabel_image_for_shop)
series (language_specific_name, sort_order_for_dropdown, sublabel_image_for_shop)
genre (language_specific_description, sort_order_for_dropdown, genre_image_for_shop)
publisher (language_specific_name, sort_order_for_dropdown, publisher_image_for_shop, language_specific_url, language_specific_description_text)
authors (name, sort_order_for_dropdown, author_image_for_shop, language_specific_url, language_specific_description_text)
In the code of "moku book" I saw a field called "book type", but I don't understand what it is used for. I therefore do not plan to implement a "type" field for the "bookx" add-on. Furthermore, "moku book" uses a good number of "misc" fields and quite some "drop-down" fields, for which I also do not quite see what they are used for. Possibly they have something to do with searching, but whatever they do, there must be a more elegant way to achieve the same result :-)
If someone wants to comment on these extra data fields, please do.
I myself will be using this add-on for a single publisher with an online shop, so a bookstore may have different needs. For example there is no plan for a data field "book language". Let me know if this is needed for someone.
All data items can be set in the admin backend to appear in the product_listing and product_info view.
It would be great if there are volunteers for a (short!) beta-testing stage, so that the add-on has been tested by a few people before it is installed in online shops.
philou
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