Book Image

Django 1.2 E-commerce

By : Jesse Legg
Book Image

Django 1.2 E-commerce

By: Jesse Legg

Overview of this book

<p>Django is a high-level Python web framework that was developed by a fast-moving online-news operation to meet the stringent twin challenges of newsroom deadlines and the needs of web developers. It provides an excellent basis to build e-commerce websites because it can be deployed fast and it responds quickly to changes due to its ability to handle content problems. Django with its proven strengths is all you need to build powerful e-commerce applications with a competitive edge. <br /><br />This book explores how the Django web framework and its related technologies can power the next leap forward for e-commerce and business on the Web. It shows you how to build real-world applications using this rapid and powerful development tool.<br /><br />The book will enable you to build a high quality e-commerce site quickly and start making money. It starts with the ambitious task of using Django to build a functional e-commerce store in less than 30 minutes, and then proceeds to enhance this design through the rest of the book. The book covers the basics of an e-commerce platform like product catalogs, shopping carts, and payment processing. By the end of the book, you will be able to enhance the application by adding a fully-functional search engine, generating PDF-based reports, adding interactivity to the user-interface, selling digital goods with micropayments, and managing deployment and maintenance tasks.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Django 1.2 e-commerce
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

PayPal and other payment processors


The Web has a full ecosystem of payment processing services. We have detailed the use of two of the major players: Google Checkout and Amazon Flexible Payment Services. These two companies provide excellent solutions for payment processing. The primary benefit of building your application for these services is that they are extremely developer friendly. Libraries are available in many languages and their documentation is complete and well tested.

Most payment processors follow a similar design as the two we've discussed. One of the oldest services on the web, PayPal, offers a variety of payment services-everything from "Buy Now" style buttons to shopping cart integration.

We will not implement a PayPal payment processor here, but will discuss the general approach to building one. Unfortunately, the PayPal payment APIs are not particularly friendly for Python developers. They have not yet published official Python tools, though they do offer implementations...