Custom E-commerce Software?

[M4T VW]

Not sure I will get much luck here but worth a try.

My company has an online shop, (PM me for a link) and we currently run EKM Powershop.
Now this is being a PITA as NO software that integrates with Sage line 50 (my accounting program) will work with EKM, They just don’t have that kind of system in place.

I’m thinking of ditching EKM and using a custom software, Something like Actinic.
https://www.actinic.co.uk/index.php?...per&Itemid=208
The only trouble with this is you create a catalogue online so all my product pages would change URL for it to work properly. This CANNOT happen due to our SEO work. We are the best in the market under any Google search.

So what I’m after is a piece of software that can build a shopping cart only for us but also integrate with Sage line 50.
I won’t be doing the building so I don’t mind how complicated it is

I have found someone who can make an off the shelf piece of software work by writing a script to work with EKM, But this will cost me over £1000 in development so it’s worth looking at a different cart software.
http://www.getconnect.co.uk/

Any ideas?

Cheers
Mat

[DoubleTop]

hmm, the more I hear of this, the more tempted I am to write a module that takes EKM invoices and puts them into Sage.

The downer is that the sage developer licence is very prohibitive due to the cost Can you run imports of simple CSV's ?

DT.

[M4T VW]

Well the new version has the ability to import CSV's itself but im yet to try that part.
I "upgraded" the server yesterday over the top of 2007 but 2007 still appears in the installed programs list, I woud have thought it would have taken it out.
Might just uninstall it all and reinstall 2010, I have a backup of it.

[M4T VW]

Smally update for you DT just so you know what you can do with Sage.
I have a company who will write me a script that will be able to get orders from EKM in a CSV file and put them into the program that sends it to sage.
To write this script it will cost me £1000 plus £25 a month for the software.

Now, Would it be possible to write somthing like that myself? There is another piece of software called Tradebox. Its very simular to the other one but alot cheaper without the script.
This works by getting the CSV files from a folder a processing them.

What i need to script/build is a little program that will login to a website using a username and password, Go to a URL within that website and put a from and to date in, Then wait for the CSV to build and download it into my folder.

What program should i be looking at to build somthing like this?
It looks like the pages are in .aspx and a couple of the links are javascript.

Any help appreciated!

[DoubleTop]

you could do the login, goto url and wait for response in many languages, that's pretty much what a load of testing software I write does and has done. I tend to like using perl, but could be done as a windows app in c# express easily enough.

£1000 sounds a bit steep to me, you don't want anything pretty just a time saver as from the sounds of things you can do it manually as it stands anyway, so £1000 would take doing it manually a lot of times to get ROI.

I'm over subscribed at the moment, but I'll peek through the c# code in my little library of useful things and see how much I can help.

DT.

[M4T VW]

Well ive made a start using Visual Basic 2010

Done a few tutorials today so got a grasp on it so far.
Trying to create the login at the moment, This is the page it needs to login.
https://www.ekmsecure.co.uk/ekmps/youraccount.asp

Seems to be having problems with finding the username and password fields, I see them in the HTML as "forum_username" & "form_password" but it just doesnt see it and put in what i want.

Have a quick read of this.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/For...5-9ba543f4911d

Edit, I dont really want to put my username and password in the script, I would much rather have text boxes on the form i have to manually put them in, More secure that way.

Cheers
Mat

[Aaron]

Hey mate

If you get stuck and need something writing for you, I'm pretty sure a guy I do a lot of work with could knock something up for you, and I expect he'd be way cheaper than £1k! If you can do it yourself then thats definitely the best way, but let me know if you need some contact details if that'd be helpful

[DoubleTop]

I'm happy to help out gratis remotely - much prefer teaching people how to do things themselves, more job satisfaction

I'll have a play this afternoon, if I get the car brakes sorted in good time

DT.

[M4T VW]

Thanks DT your a star, It seems pretty easy what im after (He says)

If you were closer i could have done your brakes in return

[DoubleTop]

if you could switch to using VS2010 express c#, that'll make my life a little easier. Although I can code in any of them, that's what I'll be using in work next week - saves me switching code modes

DT.

[M4T VW]

Im using VB Studio Express 2010 so i think thats the same.

Problem im having at the moment is the EKM website seems to be written really badly so there are no table ID's.
Need to use somthing called regex but its all way over my head at the moment.
Made a post on MSDN and see what they say...

[DoubleTop]

you shouldn't need regex, that's using a hammer to crack a nut imo.

feel free to email me what you've done so far though

DT.

[M4T VW]

Well ok, Maybe not got too far...

Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
' Part 1: Use WebBrowser control to load web page
WebBrowser1.Navigate("http://www.website.com/login.aspx")

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000) ' Delay 2 seconds to render login page

' Part 2: Automatically input username and password
Dim theElementCollection As HtmlElementCollection
theElementCollection = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")
For Each curElement As HtmlElement In theElementCollection
Dim controlName As String = curElement.GetAttribute("name").ToString
If controlName = "UserNameTextBox" Then
curElement.SetAttribute("Value", "Username text here")
ElseIf controlName = "PasswordTextBox" Then
curElement.SetAttribute("Value", "Password text here")
'In addition,you can get element value like this:
'MessageBox.Show(curElement.GetAttribute("Value"))
End If
Next

' Part 3: Automatically clck that Login button
theElementCollection = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")
For Each curElement As HtmlElement In theElementCollection
If curElement.GetAttribute("value").Equals("Login") Then
curElement.InvokeMember("click")
' javascript has a click method for you need to invoke on button and hyperlink elements.
End If
Next
End Sub
End Class

Thats the code im using, But with that code it will not find the username and password box and put what i want into it.
Just start a blank project and paste that into form 1 with a webbrowser control object.

[DoubleTop]

Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
' Part 1: Use WebBrowser control to load web page
WebBrowser1.Navigate("https://www.ekmsecure.co.uk/ekmps/youraccount.asp")
End Sub

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

Dim theElementCollection As HtmlElementCollection
theElementCollection = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")

For Each curElement As HtmlElement In theElementCollection
Dim controlName As String = curElement.GetAttribute("name").ToString
If controlName = "form_username" Then
curElement.SetAttribute("Value", TextBox1.Text.ToString())
ElseIf controlName = "form_password" Then
curElement.SetAttribute("Value", TextBox2.Text.ToString())
End If
Next

' Part 3: Automatically clck that Login button
theElementCollection = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")
For Each curElement As HtmlElement In theElementCollection
If curElement.GetAttribute("value").Equals("Log In") Then
curElement.InvokeMember("click")
' javascript has a click method for you need to invoke on button and hyperlink elements.
End If
Next

End Sub
End Class

Add a couple of text boxes onto the form, use textbox1 as username and textbox2 as password. Then add a button, button1.

By splitting the code into more little sections with a number of buttons, you'll find it easier to debug.

DT.

[M4T VW]

Man, Thats amazing. Nothing like i have been trying!

Thanks for that, I will work out what to do next with it.