Hi all

We are currently working on a large project which is requiring us to utilize an e-commerce package to provide the functionality we need. In this case, Ben's recommendation for a great open-source e-commerce package is Varien's Magento Commerce package. Although it is still in beta, we're moving forward with this task, and so a Typolight-Magento bridge is now in the works.

If anyone is interested in collaborating on this project, feel free to throw your hat in the ring!

Wow. Sounds like a great future resource for TL users. Thanks for this.

Have you notified the makers of Magento? They might be able to help out.

Hi Logan

I've mentioned it to them, yes, but haven't solicited them for help, but I may today. It's quite a different database design approach that they've taken, so it's not just updating field-to-field to sync the data.

UPDATE
I just asked Roy over at Varien and they had to pass because they are too busy with the upcoming big v1 release and "other exciting Magento news" (as he put it), so, I'm on my own as of right now.

Fred

Fred,

Exciting news about your upcoming bridge! Can you give us a brief synopsis of what features / functionalities it will include? Thanks.

Hi Fbliss

It's a great news that you've decided to work on an e-commerce solution for TL.
I might be able to give you a hand, if you need any help with EU regulations about e-commerce solutions and see if you can influence the Magneto team to comply with them.
I don't want to put in question your decision to bridge Magneto, but have you had a look at OpenCart.com ? I have not any particular preference to see one or the other bridged with TL but looks like opencart is a well written applicationin in php5 and OO and a very lightweight one.

In any case I wish you good luck with coding the bridge.

Hi Tunox,

Open Cart is a great lightweight cart! In the future we should certainly look to build a bridge for it if the demand is there.

Regarding EU regulations, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm sure the Magento team would be interested in those regulations.

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Hi Ben,

The bridge is going to be extremely simple. As of right now, it is based exclusively upon what we need it to do for an ongoing project...

- When a front end member signs up on the TL side, their information in synchronized with Magento so that they do not have to create two accounts (one for TL, one for Magento). They will be able to log into(?) the store(s) with their existing info. I haven't decided whether to make it a single log in procedure or keep it separate for now.

I'd be interested in hearing further requests for this project.

REALLY GREAT NEWS!!
I like more the Magento ecommerce than the open-cart. OpenCart has a really small community and to few options/features in my opinion.

Greetings, darki

Bump. After some postponement for other projects, the TL-Magento Commerce bridge is now back in progress! After consulting with Varien, the approach I am taking is to utilize Varien's Mage framework to handle customer management. Essentially, this means that customer information changes or new customers will be added to the Magento side using Mage framework code wrapped up in the Typolight framework. The Magento database is completely different than the TL database in structure (Magento is Entity-Attribute-Value style, whereas Typolight is more like 2/3 Normalized Form style)

I'll keep you all posted on progress & Happy New Year!

Fred

Hello fbliss,

I also think that Magento is a very promising e-commerce solution. So your idea sounds great for me. When you will need help in testing your bridge, just post a note here.

Regards
Harry

HI Harry,

Wonderful, I will do that. This bridge should be available in the next 7-10 days.

Fred

Wah-wah, the bridge is on hold until I can get some time from Magento staff, or else get it figured out myself. Around every corner lies another roadblock. We're off the edge of the map... here there be monsters!!

Oh that hurt..
Wish there was something I could do to help up in here, Magento is an eCommerce system that looks really good, they should be interested in be "bridged" upon to another rising star on the open source CMS heaven. Now I refer to the second place for Most Promising Open Source CMS in this year's Packt Publishing CMS Award.
http://www.typolight.org/archive/items/packt-publishing-awards-2007.html

Hope this roadblock gets out the way fast!

Oh, we'll get it one way or the other, I just can't spend further dev time on it right now. This will definitely be my 1st half of '08 project. Magento is shaping up to be pretty damn clean in the code, it's just going to be a matter of what is the best method (API, direct mashup) Since there is no API currently available, and the documentation is nonexistent. Every error points to a very abstracted, arcane resource or model so it's extremely difficult to track exceptions thrown in Zend or the Varien framework. I will get my noggin around this, though!

Fred

Hi!

I'm currently thinking about having Magento in one of my projects. Having the bridga would be great!

Any idea when the bridge might be available?

Sorry if I'm pressuring, unfortunately I can not do anything as complex as that myself.

So, in any case thanks a lot for your commitment to TL!!

A really great idea! Having the option of combining the best opensorce CMS with the best opensource e-commerce system makes perfekt sense!

/Mike