using KonKart without permanent products

[Konstantin]

I'm looking for a good way to integrate KonaKart with existing (not public available yet) product catalog. There are already category/product/productlist pages in catalog. There is also search and other functionality. Only cart/ordering functionality is missing. So no presentation Layer is required (except ordering phase). Also all orders will be processed automatically directly from database.

I was thinking about button at product page, that will put product in cart (KonKart), and another one, that will show cart and order. Also it will be good if i could show cart total value at the top of all webcatalog pages. So there will be no products/groups in KonKart, but products will be created when they are added to cart. And after order, these products will be deleted from. Is it possible to insert products/cart items from other application using java API?

[trevor]

Yes, one of the most powerful aspects of KonaKart is that all Store Front and Admin App functionality is available through the Java and/or SOAP APIs. Actually, one of our larger customers maintains his product catalog (which has a very complicated structure) outside of the KonaKart database.

In your scenario you have to be careful about deleting the product from the KonaKart database since more than one customer may be buying it at the same time. Maybe it is more sensible just to keep the products synchronized with the master copy being the external catalog.

[Jules]

Hi Trevor,

We are having a look at Konakart to see if it's fitted for our needs, and we would like to know if it's possible to not only use externally stored products, but also externally stored user accounts. Are there existing Kk customers who work like this, are there any samples?

TIA!

P.S. sorry for reviving a dead thread

[trevor]

This is typically done when integrating with existing systems or SSO systems. All of the customer data is gathered dynamically from external sources and a KK customer is registered using the API (behind the scenes) so that he can checkout.

Using a nightly batch, the KK temporary customer data can be deleted. Some implementations prefer to keep this data so that the customer can return to the web site and see the status of his orders etc.