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Things to look out for when reading in 2020?


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Hello friends! 

I just picked up the Kindle format of the 2nd edition and was wondering if there was a list of things I should be aware of when reading this book, a number of years after the date it was published in 2013?   

It's been a long while since I've thought about what it takes to build a sample e-commerce site.  The "theory" and ideas I saw when previewing this book, are what really attracted me to it.  This book seemed to be one of the few programming books written in recent years, dedicated to the subject.  

I have some background in programming (I'm "OK" working on becoming "good", so that one day I'll be "great")  in many different languages.  I anticipate being able to follow along with the PHP and SQL examples presented in this book, but I see myself translating the concepts to code written in Node.js or ASP.NET Core, because that's what I find myself spending more time in these days.  Disclaimer: I have nothing against PHP, and think it's a fully capable web server framework that has stood the test of time.

The last experience I've had with B2C e-commerce sites is with Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 product which used Classic ASP (which is somewhat similar to PHP but runs traditionally on Windows and IIS servers).  If I remember correctly, you ran a wizard that generated a fully working site (store front and administration) consisting of maybe 25 to 50 basic ASP pages (department.asp, product.asp, basket.asp, checkout.asp, and so on) that you could edit and customize.  I wish I still had access to the software so I could see if it was as good as I remember it being, but my MSDN membership CDs were thrown out many years ago. 

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to getting started on this book.

 

Edited by ericK
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Thanks for the interest in the book! I do appreciate it. I don't actually have a list of changes, however. I'd recommend checking out what's changed in PHP since the book was written. The major changes there are probably most important for your case. 

Best wishes with your studies!

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Thanks for the reply.  I think the PHP code in the book should work just fine for me.  The nice thing about PHP is that it seems to be very mature, and also backwards compatible with older versions.  I was mainly wondering if there were breaking changes to any of the external APIs used (such as Paypal, Stripe or Authorize.NET).  I guess I shouldn't be too concerned, as most of the payment providers keep things pretty consistent and/or provide excellent up-to-date documentation. 

On another note, I was able to find some of the old documentation and sample sites for Site Server Commerce Edition 3.0 on archive.org. 

Volcano Coffee Sample Site Upgrade microsoft.com (via archive.org)

I had forgotten about it until now, but it reminded me of the coffee sample site from the book's section on selling physical products.  I don't have it up and running yet because it requires some COM objects (packaged code in DLLs that could be called by Active Server Pages) that were included as part of the install, but here is the source code for the web site: https://github.com/streetwiseherc/vcturbo  

The database schema can be found under the Config folder: https://github.com/streetwiseherc/vcturbo/tree/master/src/Config/SQL/SQLSvr

It's a pretty basic e-commerce site, with easy to read through code, but at the time I remember the Site Server Commerce Edition product being used by some pretty big sites and being kind of expensive: Pricing and Licensing Information

Site Server Commerce Edition eventually was discontinued by Microsoft and is now SiteCore Commerce Server: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitecore_Commerce_Server

 

 

 

 

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