Re: shopping cart in net.data -- WEB400

Nathan - I like the cookie idea, especially since - and I'm not making this
up - the site will be selling cookies. I was also planning on using a file
maintained by an RPG program to hold session data (items in the cart, etc)
and storing the key to the file in a cookie sounds good. Unfortuantely, I
don't know how to work with cookies in Net.data. Help?

Larry Kleinman
Kleinman Associates, Inc.
212-949-6469
203-255-4100

Nathan Andelin
<nandelin@gowebto
p.com> To
Sent by: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
web400-bounces@mi <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
drange.com cc

Subject
03/06/2008 05:36 Re: [WEB400] shopping cart in
PM net.data

Please respond to
Web Enabling the
AS400 / iSeries
<web400@midrange.
com>

Larry,

I'm glad to see that net.data is still in use, and that you're using RPG
in the mix. I'm not sure the best way to keep track of user state
(stuff entered on prior screens and needed on the next), but I'd
probably lean toward using RPG for that. I wrote a generic service
program for it, and store session data in a file. I store a session key
in a cookie to link to the data stored in the file.

Nathan.

--
Sent using goWebtop from Laszlo Systems.
Try it yourself : http://www.gowebtop.com

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Larry Kleinman wrote:

Thanks for the quick response. I agree, net.data does not do
complicated
well. I apologize for not being specific. Most of the logic will be
done
via calls to RPG programs (since most of these already exist). I
think that
what is hanging me up is the ability to keep a single "transaction"
while
going from screen to screen. In "green screen days" this would be
simple -
an order number in an order header file, that is associated with all
of the
items (in an order detail file). My problem is going to be keeping
track of
this order number as we go from screen to screen (sometimes via HREF,
sometimes via SUMBIT). I'd rather not be passing this number as part
of the
URL. I know net.data has the ability to do a persistent function, but
the
documentation that I've seen for this is a nightmare. Is this the
direction
- other than something like PHP which I do not yet know well enough to
deal
with - that makes sense? If so, do you know where I might find some
examples of persistent macros?

Larry Kleinman
Kleinman Associates, Inc.
212-949-6469
203-255-4100

"Haas, Matt (CL
Tech Sv)"
<matt.haas@cengag To
e.com> Web Enabling the AS400 /
iSeries
Sent by: <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
web400-bounces@mi cc
drange.com
Subject
Re: [WEB400] shopping cart in
03/06/2008 04:16 net.data
PM
Please respond to
Web Enabling the
AS400 / iSeries
<web400@midrange.
com>

Larry,

This can be done. In fact, IBM used to sell a product called
Net.Commerce
(this is now called WebSphere Commerce Suite and is written in Java)
that
did this very thing. The way they did it was to handle all of the
programming logic in native code and use Net.Data just for the
display. IBM
gave us a demo of this (that was around 1998) and the code was very,
very
ugly.

Depending upon what you're doing, shopping carts can be pretty
complicated
and it's been my experience that Net.Data doesn't do complicated very
well.

We (as in mostly me) ended up writing CGI programs to do all of this
that
wrapped our order entry logic (the validation part is where it gets
tricky,
the act of taking a product id and putting it in a table is easy). If
I were
doing this today and didn't want to use Java, I probably would use one
of
the tool kits (like CGIDEV2).

Another option would be to use PHP. There are plenty of examples in
PHP to
get you started. Most of the ones I've seen lacked the sophistication
you'd
expect of a production app but they would be a place to start.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Larry Kleinman
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 3:58 PM
To: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WEB400] shopping cart in net.data

Has anyone done a shopping cart in Net.data? I've done a lot of work
with
net.data, but never a cart. I'm about to start one, but if someone
knows
any samples, freeware, etc out there, I'd rather not start from
scratch.
Thanks

Larry Kleinman
Kleinman Associates, Inc.
212-949-6469
203-255-4100
--
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/web400.

--
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/web400.

------------------------------

--
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/web400.

--
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/web400.