ecommerce

Reader BWH asks a good question: How to integrate an Amazon aStore with a Drupal site?

In Checking out Amazon on Drupal 6, Part 1 and Checking out Amazon on Drupal 6, Part 2, I looked at the capabilities of the Amazon module and the Amazon Store module. I didn't touch upon the aStore, though, Amazon's offering for building custom, branded online stores with hand-picked products. I didn't see any special features within the modules for handling aStores – and, as far as I know, there is no special modular approach for integrating an aStore with a Drupal site. The only solution I know of would be that suggested by Amazon:

aStore is a new Associates product that gives you the power to create a professional online store, in minutes and without the need for programming skills, that can be embedded within or linked to from your website.

Those would be the immediate options for a Drupal site: either link to the aStore (boring!) or embed it. For embedding purposes, the solution I've used in the past (with fine results, thank you) is the Iframe module, which allows embedding of an external page within a Drupal node.

Take a look at the aStore embedded within this page at Drupal Books. I don't know whether that page is using Iframe or some custom code, but Iframe should allow similar results. The frame in question (at least on my browser) is too narrow to hold the aStore page's width and should be made wider, but that issue aside, seems to work nicely in allowing normal shopping operations (product display, searches, etc.) without leaving the parent Drupal site page.

There may be other, simpler answers for integrating an aStore with Drupal. I'm not experienced with aStores, so I'll ask the world: Any better suggestions? 

But until I hear otherwise, my answer to the original question: Based on my shallow experience, I'm thinking that an embedded aStore sounds like a superior solution to the Amazon and Amazon Store modules, if the resulting store-within-a-site meets your needs, and assuming that Amazon's aStore tools make creation easy. I have my quibbles with the modules (see earlier links), and am guessing that it's easier to build and maintain an aStore the Amazon way. Plus, the resulting aStore can not only be embedded within the Drupal site, but can be visited as a stand-alone site (useful for when the Drupal site is down!).

I welcome any other thoughts on the topic. It's all fascinating but still largely unknown territory for me.

In my review of Packt Publishing's Drupal E-Commerce with Ubercart 2x, I mentioned that a number of troubles and hiccups caused me to run pretty late with both my review and my creation of a test e-commerce site. What sort of problems? My review and a handful of blog posts leading up to it already mention a few, like image paths that required slashes before Node Import would work. Below are a few more misfires, in no particular order, that I took note of while building my store. (You'll note that none of them seem to be particularly the fault of Ubercart, and certainly not the fault of the Packt book I was working from. They're just a random heap of gremlin-like woes.)

Here it is: the promised review of Packt Publishing's Drupal E-Commerce with Ubercart 2x, by George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras.

Wow, this took me some time! Partly for good reason, too. I set out to not just read the book and proclaim it good (or not), but to also follow along and build my own working Drupal + Ubercart site. And so I did.

But was there pain along the way? Oh yes, there was pain, and then some more. Glitches and screeching-halt gum-ups galore. Here's the important thing, though: Those weren't the fault of the book. Despite quibbles with its content that I'll mention, the book was a great help (and if you're in a rush, let that be your review right there). Rather, I was beset by a succession of hiccups involving Drupal, Ubercart, my hosting service, my local-computer development setup, and probably cranky gremlins too.

I'll save all that for later, so as not to distract from the main review. Let's get on with that:

I'm working through Packt Publishing's Ubercart 2x book to create a spiffy Drupal e-commerce site. So far, I'm finding the book itself worthwhile; it's been quite a help in installing and setting up Ubercart, and creating some basic products. All fine and good, and I look forward to showing off a sample site and writing up the book review.

What's taking me so long is getting Drupal/Ubercart to work right. First I had a problem with certain Ubercart admin forms making themselves unavailable – a problem which, like an earlier unrelated problem with image paths, mysteriously hiccuped itself into resolved status. (Oh, Drupal, stop toying with me.)

Now it's problems with importing nodes from a spreadsheet. This is a part of the book I could just skip, creating all my sample products one node at a time. But I've been wanting to play with node importing for some time now; I have plans for a future site that'll require mass import of music-related data. Any e-commerce site I build in the future, too, is almost certain to require import of product data, so I definitely want to take this chance to learn the importing ropes.

The import process calls upon the good offices of the Node Import module, a welcome tool which, although used in the Packt book, isn't entirely up to full production snuff in Drupal 6. My first bug upon trying to import product data took the form of an ugly error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function uc_product_node_is_product()...

Bleah. One solution, as noted in module issues threads, is to forego the latest release candidate, 6.x-1.0-rc4, and use the newer 6.x-1.x-dev instead. That worked! But then comes the second bug:

Once the spreadsheet file and other assets (such as images) are all ready, Node Import takes you through an eight-screen process to start the import. Click "Start Import" on that last screen, and something magical is supposed to happen with (I'm told) a progress screen and, finally, magically-created nodes. Alas, I'm getting the Drupal equivalent of that Millennium Falcon hyperspace scene, where the engines rev up and... sputter out, keeping the ship right where it is. My site just jumps back to the start of the import process, with no progress bars, nothing imported, no new nodes. I add a little detail in an issues thread where a couple other Drupalers have reported the same trouble.

(ADDITION: The above problem holds true using both a tab-separated format or a comma-separated format, whether I output from Numbers or from Excel. Actually, using comma-separated (CSV) format, it holds true using general Latin encodings – but what Node Import asks for is UTF8 encoding. When I try that, I don't even get as far as the end of the eight screens; after just four or so, I get this lovely error message:

Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /<my web site path>/sites/all/modules/node_import/node_import.admin.inc on line 371

Sigh.)

So that's where I am today. I expect I'll get past it eventually... maybe even really quickly, if a kind soul reading this can suggest what's going wrong. Anyone?? (Banging on the monitor isn't helping at all.) 

In the meantime, looking ahead through the Packt book, I see all kinds of exciting Ubercart features waiting to be tapped. Sure hope I can get there soon!

EDIT: I think my problem's solved. See end.

I'm working on an Ubercart store using the documentation at Ubercart.org and Packt Publishing's Ubercart 2x book. According to that book and to Ubercart.org documentation, the form at Administer › Store administration › Configuration › Cart settings should have three tabs: Cart settings, Cart panes, and Cart block. However, on the new site I created, I see no tabs at all; there are the various settings expected for the Cart settings tab (General cart settings, Anonymous cart duration, Continue shopping element, and Cart breadcrumb), but there are no actual tabs, and thus no way to reach the settings for Cart panes and Cart block.

Any ideas on why this might be? I'm on Drupal 6.15 and Ubercart 6.x-2.2. I tried enabling all core and optional Ubercart modules, to no avail. The Theme is the default Garland. No funny cacheing- or optimization-related features are enabled. What could cause these tabs to be missing?

(I've asked the question at the Ubercart.org forums and the Drupal.org forums, and am still looking for an answer. Thanks to anyone who can help!)

EDIT: I'm going to sheepishly – if tentatively – retract my question. I've been unable to find any other folks with the same problem, suggesting that it's truly a bizarre quirk of my own setup, and not a Drupal or Ubercart problem per se, with a clean answer floating about out there. In the end, I tried "joggling" things: clearing cached data in admin/settings/performance (even though I have cache disabled); and, disabling and then re-enabling Ubercart modules. Somehow, those actions did the trick: I now get the missing tabs. 

As happens with Drupal problems now and then, it's a welcome but unsatisfying resolution; it's the equivalent of smacking a TV to make the picture come in, without revealing anything about the source of the problem, how to prevent it happening again, and what to do if a future recurrence proves more stubborn. Sigh. In any case, things do look to be working again. 

For anyone running across the same problem and this post in the future: You may be facing a "gremlins" issue and not a clear problem to be reasoned out. Try purging with any and all caches, disabling and re-enabling modules, and just general fiddling with things. Heck, try giving the monitor a few knocks; that just may do it. : /