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Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 1:39 pm
by cland410
Hi guys, just registered today so I could post this topic on here. I am designing a website for a local pizza shop in my college town. My main goal is to have it as functional as similar to that of Dominos and Papa Johns websites. The development stage that has me stumped is that of after the user has completed the order. From the order being placed in the system what would I need to do have the store know that an order was placed. E-mail confirmation is the only way I know how shopping carts place orders but I know this will not be very effective at a busy pizza shop. I am thinking of some sort of server side application that will create receipts that print automatically upon receiving them at the store. If anyone has any suggestions I would be very excited to hear from you guys and hope that through discussion some process can be made here. Thanks!

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 3:27 pm
by mikemike
I implemented a system like this once for a in-house system posting orders. They wanted something web-based (even though something in VB or C/C++ would have been better) for a system where they book in computers.

The insert system would just insert the order into a database, no biggy there.

The rest of the system was also really simple. It was a page that refreshed (via a meta refresh HTML tag) with a simple list of the latest orders. You could have it display that days orders with new orders (last 5mins maybe?) in a highlighted colour.

Things like this tend to be better kept simple in my opinion.

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:36 am
by Turv
mikemike wrote:I implemented a system like this once for a in-house system posting orders. They wanted something web-based (even though something in VB or C/C++ would have been better) for a system where they book in computers.

The insert system would just insert the order into a database, no biggy there.

The rest of the system was also really simple. It was a page that refreshed (via a meta refresh HTML tag) with a simple list of the latest orders. You could have it display that days orders with new orders (last 5mins maybe?) in a highlighted colour.

Things like this tend to be better kept simple in my opinion.
That would be my suggestion too.

Have a secure page (Probebly somewhere in the admin panel) that the Pizza shop would have loaded on a PC. I would use Ajax to call another script that would check for new orders (That have not been marked as completed on the system).

Check the return value of the page you call - If it has orders you could go really old-school and play an embedded sound haha - or just display the order on the page and ensure someone checks it every few minutes?

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:32 am
by onion2k
I think you're going to need to be a bit cleverer than having a browser page that refreshes every so often. It's a pizza shop. That means the employees are going to be young, minimum/low wage workers. Relying on a computer in the store to be left on the correct page won't work. The employees will use it to check Facebook, look at the news, play games, etc, during quiet periods ... they won't put it back on the right page.

It's possible to print documents over the internet using HTTP or IPP ... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 90831.aspx ... I've never tried it though. Alternatively, how about sending a fax? Email-to-fax gateways are cheap and very easy to use.

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:18 pm
by iFlex
onion2k wrote:I think you're going to need to be a bit cleverer than having a browser page that refreshes every so often. It's a pizza shop. That means the employees are going to be young, minimum/low wage workers. Relying on a computer in the store to be left on the correct page won't work. The employees will use it to check Facebook, look at the news, play games, etc, during quiet periods ... they won't put it back on the right page.

It's possible to print documents over the internet using HTTP or IPP ... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 90831.aspx ... I've never tried it though. Alternatively, how about sending a fax? Email-to-fax gateways are cheap and very easy to use.
Its very easy to set up network filltering via the PC administrator but I think an actual computer application would help more.

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:02 pm
by mikemike
Like I said, it would be preferrable to use a proper application built in a programming language like VB of C/C++, but if PHP is a must then I think the easiest idea would be to simply have a refreshable webpage. It's easy enough to lock a webpage on a computer, even IE can do it and there are a few Firefox extensions that do it too. No need wasting your time on something overly complex in my opinion

Re: Online Pizza Store Shopping Cart implementation

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 9:50 pm
by cland410
Thanks for all the comments and I really appreciate your suggestion onion2k about the email-to-fax machine. I ran that by the guy I'm working for and thinks that it would be the most convenient and cheapest way because he justs have to pay for an extra phone line. I'm still open for other ideas allowing for future references and other jobs down the line.