Creating an add-on "product type book" for ZC 1.5

[philou]

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:

Do be forwarned it doesn't work too well with 1.5.0 but I have been able to use it seemlessly with 1.3.9h and earlier. 1.5.0 has it's own version of product book but it is seriously lacking. Maybe the developers can take this and figure out what is missing with the new version of zen cart.
http://www.atmospherebooks.com/test/...LANGS_ISS2.zip

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

[nealt900]

Philou, I have been combing the internet for someone working on a book product type module for 1.5 for the past 2 hours. What a strange coincidence that you made this post just a few moments ago. I have a great need for this plugin, and would happily volunteer for some beta testing.

The site I'm building is a wholesale book site, and the primary requirements I need to meet are these:

-To be able to sort books by author (or select the letter that the author begins with & it display everything that matches)
-To be able to import all of the inventory from stone-edge(an inventory management software compatible with zen-cart) so that each field from stone-edge goes into the correct book product type field.

Do you think those two things would be achievable with the module you're working on?

[philou]

Hi nealt900,

the search should be possible as I plan to implement search / filtering by genre / author / publisher etc.
The import should be doable as well, however I would first have to get an idea of how much work is needed to develop this before I can commit to implementing that, as an import from your inventory management add-on is a bit beyond what I would personally for my setup here :)
If you can upload an snippet of SQL somewhere with a table structure and 2-3 lines of data, I will have a look once I get to that part of the job. You can send me a message with an URL for the data.

Let's see how the whole thing progresses.
I am expect development to be a matter of weeks.

[jkcollect]

philou I am working on a bookstore web site for ebook reading and downloads. I will be a beta tester for your plugin.

[philou]

Ok, work has progressed nicely but over the last three weeks I have been diverted to other projects. I hope to have something to test soon :)

[philou]

Hi jkcollect,

do you need to covert existing products into "book type" or will you be entering everything as new products?
if you need them converted, will they be converted from "product type general" or are you using anoethr product type already?

thx,
p.

[draw4fun]

Hi all, I am a publisher and very interested in this thread. Please IM me if you need help or testers. I am using 1.5 Zen Cart and currently working on a new design.

[philou]

Hi D4F,

development has progressed well, but it's lacking some work on the "catalog" side, i.e. filtering for "authors" or some other attributes. The display of product info for the "book" type is still very ugly at present, but that may be the smallest problem, since most users may customize the product info display anyway? It's also missing an instruction manual which covers at least the basics.

Hopefully in February it will be in a state where I could pass it on for some testing.

There is some very basic conversion of "normal" ZC products to the "book" type and back. I don't know if there are other "book" plugins currently in use, for which it would be nice to convert to this new book product type. That may be something for a future version.

[booker]

philou,

I'm a bookseller looking at different cart solutions. If you're near a testing phase I'd love to take a look! If zen cart winds up being our best solution then I'd be happy to help out some too.

[philou]

Hi Booker,

I hope to get back onto this project within the next two weeks – unfortunately (for this project :-) I have been submerged in another project over the past two months...
As I said above, the development on product type "book x" is actually quite advanced, but it needs some pulling together. For someone who is a developer and quite familiar with ZenCart it should be useable soon, for someone who needs to mainly interact with the module through the backend, it still needs more polishing.
I will make a post here as soon as I have something that can be beta tested by those who are currently developing a shop.

Best regards,
p.