Broadleaf Commerce Discussion Forums

I have grabbed the latest on trunk from the broadleaf SVN repository, and built and started the demo and admin applications based on the following instructions:

http://www.broadleafcommerce.org/conflu ... ment+Setup

I have several questions, as there does not seem to be any documentation on using braodleaf commerce (setting up a store, catalog, taxes, etc.)

Gift Cards: I don't see any way to create a gift card in the admin utility for users to purchase or redeem in the store.

Wishlists: what is the point of the wish list? As a logged in user I can create a wishlist and add items to it, but if noone else can see my wishlist, what is the point? I was hoping it would be more useful as a gift registry feature

Product Options and Attributes: I can't find any way to create attributes for a product. For example, if one of my products is a t-shirt, and it is available in red and blue, the red and blue options should be selectable on the product page. All other ecommerce soutions I have evaluated have had this feature.

SEO Urls: The urls for the products are not SEO at all, what exactly is the search engine optimization?

Social Network Integration: The feature list on the website also lists integeration with facebook as a feature, but I see no way to configure anything in the admin application, nor any reference to it in the documentation.

Is there any more documentation on these features? Have I missed something completely obvious? Is there another branch in your SVN repository that I should have pulled from?

Thanks

Hi - I'll attempt to address your questions one-by-one:

1) Gift Cards. Gift cards are a more complex item than what could be created simply in the core admin. Dispensation through your payment partner must be made for creating and processing gift cards. That isn't to say that such a mechanisms couldn't be added to your Broadleaf admin as a new module, but we wouldn't know who your payment partner is ahead of time. With our upcoming 1.5 release, we're adding in a completely new admin application based on SmartGWT that will provide much better support for addition of custom modules. Having said all this, Broadleaf does support multiple payment types for an order and there is already API to handle gift cards specifically as a mode of payment - there just needs to be a payment integration module behind if for your payment processor.

2) Wishlists. The purpose of wishlists currently is indeed a rather simple one. The idea is that someone browsing your catalog might identify one or more products that he/she is interested, but may not be ready to buy at that exact moment. With the wishlist, the user can return later to your site and quickly resurrect those interesting products without having to search for them all over again. It would be possible to build a gift registry feature on top of this. The wish list could be the mode in which the original customer specifies the products he/she desires. Then additional code and database support could be added to track item purchase and user identity as the gift registry is fulfilled. This wouldn't be too hard to add on, but it's a feature we currently don't have.

3) We do have specific API on the ProductImpl class for generic attributes. In this way, you can utilize our Product class without any extension. However, if you prefer to extend our Product implementation and clearly define additional API that may better serve your business requirements, this is definitely possible. This extensibility is one of the great aspects of Broadleaf. However, looking at these features from the 1.1 admin GUI, we are definitely remiss. Our 1.0 - 1.1 admin was never full featured and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted to go in another direction. You'll see our longer term vision for the admin application with the 1.5 release, and many of the features that are missing (product attributes, etc...) in the current admin will finally be available.

4) We agree that from an SEO perspective, the product urls need some help. This is also on our 1.5 roadmap. You can see all the items that are part of 1.5 at this url:
http://www.broadleafcommerce.org/jira/s ... dmap-panel

5) Facebook integration is minimal (really minimal). There's just a simple share tag that creates some share links. There's no admin support for this.

I think at the end of the day, your questions boil down to "How do I create a Broadleaf store and effectively maintain it using the admin?". The best answer for this is to use the core 1.1 Broadleaf libraries and ignore the 1.1 admin for now until 1.5 is ready (there should be a milestone release of 1.5 that will contain the admin functionality in the April 2011 timeframe). The core API will change very little between 1.1 and 1.5, so migration of dependent code and database tables will be minimal. We will be providing a migration document that will specifically target the areas that changed. As for setting up a store, the key facets are establishing any additional specificity in the domain to support your business and creating your customer facing presentation layer that talks to the Broadleaf engine.

As for documentation, this is an ongoing effort for us. In regard to documenting a presentation layer approach, we are largely agnostic to the presentation layer technology used, so it's hard to get very specific there. However, we could definitely add some docs that cover the core Broadleaf API that is important to the presentation layer. As for documentation for setting up Spring, your domain, configuring payment, taxes, etc... - these are all decently covered in the existing documentation:

http://www.broadleafcommerce.org/conflu ... nvironment
http://www.broadleafcommerce.org/conflu ... ctionality

There will also be a lot of new documentation coming out around the new admin. This will include coverage of the out-of-the-box interface as well as developer documentation for configuration and extending/overriding/adding functionality.

Thanks for your inquiry and let me know if I can answer any other questions.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for taking the time to address each one of my concerns in detail. It definitely sounds like version 1.5 will have the more fully functional admin that I am in need of.

Full gift cards and gift registry support would be very useful, and perhaps it could be something, time permitting, that could be contributed by myself to Broadleaf via a patch or module. The same with SEO URLs (preferably a configurable field at product level).

Of all the Java e-commerce platforms I have worked with and evaluated, I am most impressed by Broadleaf's technology stack, and look forward to its feature set to mature over time.

Thanks again for your response, I'll make sure to check back when 1.5 releases.