Shopping carts

[xoggoth]

Managed to do anonline order form that does stuff I need inc. the simple sums and adding VAT.

Now I need to integrate with the WorldPay "Select Junior" shopping cart. This is dead simple in principle, just put the right values in hidden fields like 'amount' and put WorldPay's link in the form action field. So no probs. sending details relevant to the transaction like customer address, amount payable etc. for the transaction. We can then pick them up from the Customer Management System.

Only thing is we need more than basic customer and total amount details to fill the order, how many of each product they want, which licence, whether using school's learning credits etc. Can't see any way to send those to WorldPay, apart from trying to pack them into the description or cart ident fields which is messy and very limited.

Is it possible to have two action fields so form is sent with different details to two places when you submit or what? How is this usually done? Any ideas from more web literate types welcomed.

PS Maybe I could use onsubmit in submit button to mail myself the form? Not sure how one kicks off a php script from javascript tho. such that result is same as if you put it in action field.

[ScotsPine]

Shopping carts

a form can only have 1 action - usual is to submit the form to a server-side page (for me, asp or .net stuff) and on that page do the business logic.

javascript syntax is form.submit but that still only submits to the form 'action' . see whether worldpay will accept (unsecured) data via a query string into their system. you'd do this by a response.redirect in the asp/code behind/php script...

[AtW]

it is better to submit to your own server side script which would log stuff and attempt to do httpsubmit of relevant data to worlpay, get result then report on it. Do not use mail to as mail is not secure and if people learn about you (suprisingly they will eventually) then you might lose credibility and we allknow that big boys can use big money to repair credibility while small companies just cant afford it.

do not use javascript as its clear whats happening and you might get some nasty hacks which will (for example) submit lots of time fake credit cards using your account number and get you locked out of the system.

[xoggoth]

Don't really follow that Atw. The Javascript in my form is not relevant to submission, it's just for checking sufficient entries, summing the subtotals and adding P&P and VAT.

The actual submission to WorldPay is not even that advanced, it's a bog standard HTML form submit as they describe in their docs. If there are real risks in this simple approach, why would WorldPay provide it? I would assume the clever security stuff starts starts once the users are actually directed to the WorldPay site.

There are a number of security things built in to that part of it, being able to reject specific users, IP addresses, multiple entries etc. Having got basic submission working in test mode I have to look at all that next before I can apply to go live. They check out the site first.

[AtW]

ok, xog monster, if worldpay provides it then it must be good.

[AtW]

thats good stuff, but you really need to make your website look less crappy (big fonts, colour scheme making NFP look state of the art etc), no offence - once I will be in position to sell my stuff I will show it to you and you will be able to tell me your own opinion about my work

[RobAnt]

Far better, easier and cheaper to use a shopping cart system like your website to display the products linked to Mal's eCommerce to act as the shopping cart (its free - or £6/mo to remove a tiny icon), integrated with Protx to process the credit/debit card data through an Internet Merchant account. (Why re-invent the wheel?)

Protx charge £20/mo to process the cards, something you can't really do yourself, for about 999 transactions (after which it is about 6p/transaction).

A merchant account costs about £300 one off, then 3% or so/transaction. Beware of Barclays cheap £130 offer, they keep the money for a long time before crediting your account. I have a Lloyds TSB account and our account is credited within 4 days. Worldpay also hold on to your dosh for a while and charge almost as much.

[xoggoth]

Hope so. Having seen some horrendous comments and even dedicated knocking websites about one of their rivals I did do a thorough search for adverse comments on WorldPay before I signed up and found absolutely nowt, which proves either a) They are @#%$ hot or b) They have some very nasty lawyers.

It does look like pretty good value, 3 site licences or 10 single CDs sold would cover the setup charges and annual cost. Think I have as usual managed to find answer to my own question. Another day tomorrow fannying about should crack it. Never knew this website stuff was so boring.

[AtW]

yeah and I bet it runs on Novell Netware only :lol

[xoggoth]

Matter of taste really. I like bold text, also yellow/orange as a colour scheme (matches Gatekeeper butterfly logo) but you are probably right that it's only me and NFP that do in the entire world. Mine could do with a bit more purple.

On the other hand there is something to be said for a site that looks a bit different, even if different=crappy, most sites with white bg, tasteful pale/dark blue text/tabs on left/top - seen one, seen em all. I might get no 1 son to do the arty side of mine - he does ones for his online games friends and they are really wierd.

The Protx thing sounds good if one can get enough transactions. At moment with just the one product a flat monthly charge not economic.