PrestaShop Front-End

[Joe Germann]

We currently use a FileMaker Pro based system to manage our business infrastructure including all of our products, product categories, orders, etc. In out system we have over 12,000 products and 250 categories for those products. We use FileMaker Pro via ODBC drivers to read and write our OS Commerce data base. It works very well with 3200 products and 220 categories that are online and managed from this front end. It is a VERY powerful front end, giving us a wide range of business and product management tools.

The reason we did this is that OS Commerce Admin services can not support our management needs for 1000's of products and our need to manage them effectively. In my testing of PrestaShop Admin services I have found that it also does not support our particular needs.

We would like to move over to PrestaShop while maintaining our current business infrastructure and manner in which we talk to our current OS Commerce store. In order to do this I will need to develop a similar interface into PrestaShop which we are willing to undertake. In order to do this I will need to know more about how PrestaShop database design and how PrestaShop behaves within that structure.

In the OS Commerce case, we reverse engineered that knowledge. While I can do that with PrestaShop, it would be real nice if we could get more design information on PrestaSHop to make our life easier.

Are any design documents available? If so, how can I get it?

Does anyone have any suggestions on how best we can approach this effort?

Is anyone interested in what we are doing for their own needs?

Many thanks,
Joe Germann

[ruilong]

There are more things to consider than just updating the database in prestashop.
for instance, if you use the function where customers can sign up their email to get a message when a product is back in stock, you need to execute the hook for product update to trigger the module mailalerts to send the emails.

My best suggestion is that you develop an API module that can do what you need (add product, update product, delete product and so on) and then in this api you trigger the hooks also. Then use your own software to send data to this api instead..

[Joe Germann]

Thanks for the feedback. In the OS Commerce world we created/read/write/modify/delete the product categories and the products and let OS Commerce do the rest of it's thing. My desire with PrestaSHop would be to do basically the same thing.

So what is the difference if I use the Admin tool to manage the database or my FileMaker based tool, UNLESS the PS Admin is doing a lot more than just stuffing the database? We are trying to manage just the database content and not the PS eCommerce software. Does the PS Admin do more than manage the database?

I would think (and hope) that the other hooks would happen automatically. Is that not the case?

Thanks,
Joe