NAME

XAO::Commerce - eCommerce Suite

SYNOPSIS

See sample site templates, images and usage examples.

DESCRIPTION

XAO::Commerce is a part of XAO open source web services suite. It allows to build eCommerce sites using XAO::Web (see XAO::Web for details).

XAO::Commerce consists of a number of templates and the following objects:

• XAO::DO::Web::Order: a child of Web::FS, keeps customer order information and implements shopping cart functionality.
• XAO::DO::Web::Account: a child of Web::FS, keeps general customer account information.
• XAO::DO::Web::Address: a child of Web::FS, keeps customer shipping address information.
• XAO::DO::Web::PayMethod: a child of Web::FS, keeps customer payment method information.
• XAO::DO::Web::Product: a child of Web::FS, keeps product information.
• XAO::DO::Web::Order: a child of Web::FS, keeps customer order information and implements shopping cart functionality. Note that to make any real shipping and tax calculations you will need to override methods in this object that make these calculations.

INSTALLATION NOTES

The easiest way to install XAO Commerce is to use CPAN. Usually you would need to something like this:

 sudo perl -MCPAN -e'install XAO::DO::Commerce'

If you downloaded archive and want to install it manually then usual four commands will do:

 perl Makefile.PL
 make
 make test
 sudo make install

Once installed the XAO Commerce is ready to be used and its templates are located in the XAO installation path (usually /usr/local/xao/projects) under templates/.

SAMPLE SITE TO SEE XAO COMMERCE IN ACTION

Here are the steps you need to follow to get a simple working sample eCommerce site that uses XAO Commerce:

The distribution comes with a sample site in the directory sample/. This directory contains a set of templates, configurations, objects and tools for putting together a functioning sample eCommerce website. To set up this sample website:

1. Sym-link or recursively copy the 'sample' directory from the XAO Commerce distribution to your 'projects' directory in XAO installation path (usually /usr/local/xao/projects). The name you use for sym-linking is the name of your site -- /usr/local/xao/projects/commerce would mean 'commerce' is the site name.

   Install the required packages, XAO::FS, XAO::Web and XAO::Catalog, along with their requirements.

2. Create an empty MySQL database for your site (providing MySQL username/password if required). In our example we use 'commerce' as the database name.

    % mysqladmin create commerce

3. Create empty XAO::FS database on top of MySQL database:

    % xao-fs --dsn=OS:MySQL_DBI:commerce init

4. Go to /usr/local/xao/projects/commerce and run configure script:

    cd /usr/local/xao/projects/commerce
    perl ./configure.pl

   Enter OS:MySQL_DBI:commerce as the database DSN and username/password of a user that has full access to that database.

5. Create database layout required by XAO Commerce:

    ./bin/build-structure

6. Create an administration user for access the sample site's admin area located at http://SITEDOMAIN/admin/:

    ./bin/add-admin LOGNAME PASSWORD EMAIL REAL_NAME

7. To load sample data set from the provided sample flatfile `cd' to the sample site directory and follow these steps:

    % bin/scan-flatfile sample_products.txt > sample_products.xml
    % bin/ifilter-flatfile sample_products.xml
    % bin/import-map FlatFile
    % bin/mark-empty-categories yes

   NOTE: see README in `sample' for details.

8. Configure a virtual server in your Apache config:

    <VirtualHost SOME_HOST_NAME>
      ServerName SOME_HOST_NAME
   
      CustomLog /usr/local/xao/projects/SITENAME/logs/access_log combined
      ErrorLog /usr/local/xao/projects/SITENAME/logs/error_log
      
      DocumentRoot /usr/local/xao/projects/SITENAME/images
      
      <Directory /usr/local/xao/handlers>
        Options ExecCGI
      
        # to use cgi's
        SetHandler cgi-script
      
        # to use mod_perl:
        #SetHandler perl-script
        #PerlHandler Apache::Registry
      </Directory>
      
      RewriteEngine on
      RewriteRule   ^/images/(.*)$ \
                    /usr/local/xao/projects/SITENAME/images/$1 \
                    [L]
      RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$ \
                    /usr/local/xao/handlers/xao-apache.pl/SITENAME/$1 \
                    [L]
    </VirtualHost>

   Here you replace SOME_HOST_NAME with a something that you have in your DNS or at least in /etc/hosts file and SITENAME with the name you give your site. It is assumed in this example that the xao installation path used is /usr/local/xao/ -- you need to change it if you used a different path.

METHODS

No publicly available methods.

EXPORTS

Nothing.

AUTHOR

Copyright (c) 2002 XAO Inc.

Marcos Alves <alves@xao.com>.

SEE ALSO

Recommended reading: XAO::Web, XAO::DO::Web::Page.