Linking the fabrik list to an e-commerce website.

[ashishrij]

I built a system on Fabrik to keep track of mobile phones.

These phones go through different stages such as 'Waiting to be repaired' and once it has been repaired..it will go to 'Waiting to be tested'..once it has been tested and testing as been passed, it will go to 'Waiting to be sold'... you get the idea.

Now what I want is to build an e-commerce website that will pull the data from the Fabrik list where the stage of the phone is on 'Waiting to be sold' and sell it there. Once the phone gets sold on the e-commerce platform that phone on our system will move to a stage called 'Sold'.

I am just brainstorming ideas on how to tackle the situation.

If you guys have done something similar before, I would love to hear how it was done.

Any ideas on how to accomplish it would be highly apprenticed.

P.S I haven't decided on the e-commerce platform yet. I don't want to build it from scratch, I would prefer to use Wordpress(woocommerce).

 

[lousyfool]

I'd strongly recommend HikaShop.
- It's Joomla.
- It's highly customizable.
- Outstanding support.
- It has "mass actions", enabling you to automate processes.
- It has a clever import system, also enabling you, with a CRON, to keep product data in sync with data from other sources.
- Even the free "Starter" version can do a lot (and a lot more than WC), though you'll probably want at least the "Essential" version as it gives you custom product fields.
- Actually, you could do what you seem to want with HikaShop alone, without Fabrik, haha, but you can also use Fabrik either "on top" of HikaShop or beside it -- for specific functionality, depending on what exactly you already have and what more you could be needing.

 

[troester]

Fabrik itself has a j2store plugin where you can "Add to cart" from your Fabrik list or details view (j2store must be installed https://www.j2store.org/)
Depending on what you want to do...
http://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/j2store-form-plugin/

 

[ashishrij]

Thanks, for the suggestions.

We will mostly deal with variable products - from what I read j2store only supports simple and downloadable.

Also, I want the Fabrik system and the e-commerce website to be completely separated.. different server.. different URLs

I have decided to stick with WordPress(woocommerce) - Everything just comes out of the box and I don't want to spend a lot of time building the e-commerce system itself if it makes sense.

woocommerce provides an API, with really well-written documentation. I can update the stock on woocommerce via fabrik using that API, I played around a bit and it's real easy.

The issue is if anything gets sold on the e-commerce website I want that to reflect back on the Fabrik system as well.

For example, if a phone gets sold on e-commerce, I want information such as who it was sold to, when it was sold, the price and other information to store in our Fabrik list(database).

I am thinking of creating an API to interact with the Fabrik list(database) from a 3rd party application(e-commerce website for this instance). The database is hosted on AWS RDS (MySQL). Still not sure if i should spend time creating an API.

I will start working on this probably sometime during middle of JAN 2020. If you guys have any suggestions please, go ahead as I am still in the brainstorming phase.

Any idea would be very much appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[mahmoodee]

We will mostly deal with variable products - from what I read j2store only supports simple and downloadable.

J2Store comes with a built-in variant / combination generator.
And for advanced Variable there is this extension for J2store
https://www.j2store.org/extensions/advanced-variable.html

If you want to use woocommerce , you can use Toolset plugin for wordpress instead of Fabrik.
Of course it does not have the capabilities of Fabrik, but it may fulfill the purpose .