Rails - Jun 2006 - Building a UK based e-commerce store in rails

I have built a few sites with Rails, however I have been approached by a 
company wanting an e-commerce / online shop built. I would love to build 
one in rails with the knoweledge I now have. I have the agile book and 
the pickaxe book they are my reference guide. However there is virtually 
nothing on creating real world e-commerce sites in rails.

They will be selling to both businesses and the general public. The 
products will be mainly computer hardware but also some software 
delivery in the future

My main issues are payment and SSL and software delivery of product.
How can I handle payments online using rails for a UK company?
What payment processors do people use for the UK (i''m pretty new to the
e-commerce game!) as my client does not want to use PayPal.
SSL integegration ( I presume that this will be handled by Lighttpd in 
TextDrive).

What is the proven way of selling software products online form a store, 
specifically a rails one?

If someone could give me some proper solid advice or pointers as to 
where I can look/ask I would be most grateful.

Also are there any UK stores powered by a rails app?

I need to way up my options, I could use an open source E-commerce PHP 
engine and customise that but would really like to goe the rails way as 
we all know that is the future!

There are a lot of people mentioning Authorize.net. This is for the 
States only,  am I wrong? What Payment Gateways are people using for a 
UK based company?

Thanks again

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It''s very easy to do payment integration on Rails - no different from 
other platforms really.

I''m current working on a Rails site where the client is using secpay 
(www.secpay.co.uk).

In the past on other (non-rails) projects i''ve used Protx 
(www.protx.co.uk), Secure Hosting (www.securehosting.com) and Worldpay 
(www.worldpay.com).

In my experience, it tends to come down to the client as to which is 
choosen for the project, although i''m getting more pushy since i
started
using Rails - must be a side-effect :0)

The first thing the customer will need is an internet merchant number 
from their bank. This will then be used to set up the account with the 
payment gateway.  Most of the payment gateways offer advice on all of this.

I''ve not worked on systems that deliver products online so maybe
someone
else could advise on that - although again, i can''t imagine it being a 
big deal.

Hope that helps,

Steve


James Whittaker wrote:
> 
> I have built a few sites with Rails, however I have been approached by a 
> company wanting an e-commerce / online shop built. I would love to build 
> one in rails with the knoweledge I now have. I have the agile book and 
> the pickaxe book they are my reference guide. However there is virtually 
> nothing on creating real world e-commerce sites in rails.
> 
> They will be selling to both businesses and the general public. The 
> products will be mainly computer hardware but also some software 
> delivery in the future
> 
> My main issues are payment and SSL and software delivery of product.
> How can I handle payments online using rails for a UK company?
> What payment processors do people use for the UK (i''m pretty new
to the
> e-commerce game!) as my client does not want to use PayPal.
> SSL integegration ( I presume that this will be handled by Lighttpd in 
> TextDrive).
> 
> What is the proven way of selling software products online form a store, 
> specifically a rails one?
> 
> If someone could give me some proper solid advice or pointers as to 
> where I can look/ask I would be most grateful.
> 
> Also are there any UK stores powered by a rails app?
> 
> I need to way up my options, I could use an open source E-commerce PHP 
> engine and customise that but would really like to goe the rails way as 
> we all know that is the future!
> 
> There are a lot of people mentioning Authorize.net. This is for the 
> States only,  am I wrong? What Payment Gateways are people using for a 
> UK based company?
> 
> Thanks again
>

Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
> It''s very easy to do payment integration on Rails - no different
from
> other platforms really.
> 
> I''m current working on a Rails site where the client is using
secpay
> (www.secpay.co.uk).
> 
> In the past on other (non-rails) projects i''ve used Protx
> (www.protx.co.uk), Secure Hosting (www.securehosting.com) and Worldpay
> (www.worldpay.com).
> 
> In my experience, it tends to come down to the client as to which is
> choosen for the project, although i''m getting more pushy since i
started
> using Rails - must be a side-effect :0)
> 
> The first thing the customer will need is an internet merchant number
> from their bank. This will then be used to set up the account with the
> payment gateway.  Most of the payment gateways offer advice on all of 
> this.
> 
> I''ve not worked on systems that deliver products online so maybe
someone
> else could advise on that - although again, i can''t imagine it
being a
> big deal.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> Steve

Steve,

Thanks for the informative reply, how difficult is it to integrate say 
secpay. It looks like they will allow connections over SSL and the use 
of XMLRPC or SOAP. In your implementation are you just directing to the 
secpay secure page for the transaction or are you using XML or SOAP to 
connect?

What is the best way (or gem) to work with XML in rails?

The pricing on Secpay looks to be pretty good too.

Many thanks again steve

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> In your implementation are you just directing to the
 > secpay secure page for the transaction
I''ve just gone with the simplest way yeah :0) I''ve used
SSL/Remote Calls
with PHP on a Protx integration but to be honest, i''ve found a bit over
the top in most cases. This site just sends the user to secpay and 
recieves a postback notification with the result of the card transaction.

As such i''ve not really XMLRPC or SOAP in a Rails app, although i know 
they''re both spikey subjects in the Rails community :0)

Steve


James Whittaker wrote:
> Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
> 
>>It''s very easy to do payment integration on Rails - no
different from
>>other platforms really.
>>
>>I''m current working on a Rails site where the client is using
secpay
>>(www.secpay.co.uk).
>>
>>In the past on other (non-rails) projects i''ve used Protx
>>(www.protx.co.uk), Secure Hosting (www.securehosting.com) and Worldpay
>>(www.worldpay.com).
>>
>>In my experience, it tends to come down to the client as to which is
>>choosen for the project, although i''m getting more pushy since
i started
>>using Rails - must be a side-effect :0)
>>
>>The first thing the customer will need is an internet merchant number
>>from their bank. This will then be used to set up the account with the
>>payment gateway.  Most of the payment gateways offer advice on all of 
>>this.
>>
>>I''ve not worked on systems that deliver products online so
maybe someone
>>else could advise on that - although again, i can''t imagine it
being a
>>big deal.
>>
>>Hope that helps,
>>
>>Steve
> 
> 
> 
> Steve,
> 
> Thanks for the informative reply, how difficult is it to integrate say 
> secpay. It looks like they will allow connections over SSL and the use 
> of XMLRPC or SOAP. In your implementation are you just directing to the 
> secpay secure page for the transaction or are you using XML or SOAP to 
> connect?
> 
> What is the best way (or gem) to work with XML in rails?
> 
> The pricing on Secpay looks to be pretty good too.
> 
> Many thanks again steve
>

Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
>> In your implementation are you just directing to the
>  > secpay secure page for the transaction
> I''ve just gone with the simplest way yeah :0) I''ve used
SSL/Remote Calls
> with PHP on a Protx integration but to be honest, i''ve found a bit
over
> the top in most cases. This site just sends the user to secpay and
> recieves a postback notification with the result of the card 
> transaction.
> 
> As such i''ve not really XMLRPC or SOAP in a Rails app, although i
know
> they''re both spikey subjects in the Rails community :0)
> 
> Steve
It looks like integrating an XMLRPC solution should be fairly simple, at 
least on paper anyway. The XMLRPC looks quite integrated in Rails have 
not used it myself so I will look into it are there any pitfalls I need 
to know about before hand?

Also is there an issue with switching between normal site & SSL site?


-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

James Whittaker wrote:
>
> There are a lot of people mentioning Authorize.net. This is for the
> States only,  am I wrong? What Payment Gateways are people using for a
> UK based company?
>
I''ve got a working Ruby library for Protx if you want - it''s a
bit
rough and could probably do with being rolled into one of the other  
payment frameworks (Active Merchant) but has been in use with us for  
a few months without fault.

It''s for their VSP Direct protocol (http://www.protx.com/support/ 
04_downloads.asp)

J

I''ve used SecPay in the past and now use Protx for my clients, Secpay
were pretty good but all my clients prefer Protx now, but it''s all a
matter of personal taste really, they''re both very good at what they
do.


James Burns-Howell wrote:
> I''ve got a working Ruby library for Protx if you want -
it''s a bit
> rough and could probably do with being rolled into one of the other
> payment frameworks (Active Merchant) but has been in use with us for
> a few months without fault.
> 
> It''s for their VSP Direct protocol (http://www.protx.com/support/
> 04_downloads.asp)
> 
> J
I would love a copy of that library if you don''t mind, would be very
useful, any chance of posting it? many thanks, Chris

-- 
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James Burns-Howell wrote:
> James Whittaker wrote:
> 
>>
>> There are a lot of people mentioning Authorize.net. This is for the
>> States only,  am I wrong? What Payment Gateways are people using for a
>> UK based company?
>>
> 
> I''ve got a working Ruby library for Protx if you want -
it''s a bit
> rough and could probably do with being rolled into one of the other
> payment frameworks (Active Merchant) but has been in use with us for
> a few months without fault.
> 
> It''s for their VSP Direct protocol (http://www.protx.com/support/
> 04_downloads.asp)
> 
> J
James, have been looking at Protx and my client is leaning towards them 
now. If you have a rough cut of the code for the Protx Direct protocol 
that would be great ti use as a basis. I have looked at ActiveMerchant 
and would be looking to integrate a Protx solution in with in. You can 
get my email address from my name on the top of the post.

Do you find that working with the Protx protocol to be fairly intuitive? 
As they don''t use XML RPC or SOAP it seems a little more fiddly to me. 
You have to deal with HTTPS POSTS and Requests.

I take it that the code you built was based around the PHP example they 
supply?

Many thanks again.

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