Messages

Hi Ronnie,

No we haven't had any security issues reported, and we don't know of any, but that's no 100% guarantee that there aren't security holes - just as there are in any system.  (See point 4 of the licence agreement http://www.konakart.com/documents/LICENSE.txt).    Thus, you have to be prepared to ensure, as you should with any software you host on the Internet, that your system is secure.

I know that one large company who are currently working on a KonaKart system are undertaking some extensive intrusion testing at this very time.    I expect we'll get to hear of any weaknesses from that study if any are uncovered.

Regards,
John

Hi Ronnie,

Yes it's production ready.  You can customise it as much or as little as you like.  You get a complete shopping cart application - client and server - in the download.

There are some essential configuration tasks to be undertaken, such as setting up your email, your payment and shipping modules, your products etc...  but there is plenty of documentation to help you with these.

Do you recommend using it?

Yes I do but I'm very biased :-)

John

Hello Ryan,

We've never claimed that KonaKart is 100% open source - see http://www.konakart.com/generalfaq.php

We've made available the source for the parts of KonaKart that we've considered to be the parts that most people will want to change (basically the main shop client) whilst retaining control of the engines.   We do this, and encourage people to program their solutions against the APIs, so that users have a much greater chance of being able to take updates to the KonaKart engines in the future and thereby taking advantage of bug fixes and new features as they arrive.   We try to ensure backwards compatibility at all times and our experience thus far is that people have indeed been able to upgrade their systems with new releases of KonaKart without modifying their clients.   Ensuring that we have a common KonaKart engine also enables us to provide a much  higher-quality support service.

The Admin App is not usually customer-facing and typically does not need changing.  As Ming mentioned below, we are planning to make it easier to add additional functionality to the Admin App in a future release.

John

As from version 2.2.2.0, KonaKart can be implemented as a JSR-168 compliant portlet.   Therefore you can run KonaKart inside any portal manager that supports JSR-168 compliant portlets.

For information on setting up the konakart portlet WAR file that you can use to deploy the KonaKart portlet, please refer to http://www.konakart.com/portlet.php

A build file is included in the download kit that allows you to create a konakart portlet war (see details in the link above).   Even if you have modified the JSPs or any of the customisable parts of KonaKart, the WAR that is created will pick these changes up... so it will create a WAR to run YOUR version of KonaKart in a portal manager and not revert back to the default KonaKart application.

Please feel free to ask your questions about running KonaKart as a portlet here.... or report any errors or problems if you find any!

Regards,
John

Hi Steve,

Whilst you could read the KonaKart database directly from OpenCms I would try to avoid that and use the KonaKart APIs instead - there are a number of reasons but one is that these APIs will work in the future, whereas reading the database directly may not.  Despite your fears, you should find it really easy to use the SOAP APIs by following the examples.

BTW, if you weren't already aware, KonaKart holds currencies and exchange rates.

Regards,
John

Hi Steve,

Good luck with your idea to sell the Combined OpenCms/KonaKart idea.  I think it makes a good combination.

There isn't any reason for building one part before the other as they are so loosely-coupled.  I guess it really depends what your customer wants most.

As for the final point:

I cannot see any need to connect a given OpenCms site to more than one KonaKart database.

It's possible if you really needed to, but I would expect that to be an unusual configuration.

If there is a way of referencing the set of (KonaKart) products in a OpenCms template it would be a lot less processing than using SOAP.

On this point I'm not entirely sure I understand your objectives here.  How would you source the data for your products?  Would you enter these manually? Is that how you hope to avoid the SOAP call?  The SOAP call does make it a flexible interface even allowing you to run the KonaKart store on a completely different server if you need to.

Regards,
John

Hi Marcello,

(First of all - we had to edit your post because it seemed to have lost all the icons, I don't know why.  we didn't change any of the wording).

Thanks for the post and the good ideas.  Someone recently tried to get something going a bit like this on SourceForge (http://www.konakart.com/forum/index.php/topic,151.0.html) so I'm sure there would be others around who would support this initiative.

From our point of vew at KonaKart we would be pleased to help and encourage the community to set up this kind of distributed collaboration for the open source pieces of KonaKart.

Our model is that we want to maintain control over the central KonaKart engine and encourage developers to build against the APIs provided - just as we have done with the demo applications and our Admin App.

A lot of code is available as open source - the Struts actions, all the application JSPs, all of the payment, shipping and order total module code, the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) one-page checkout code, the OpenCms integration kit, etc.   In the next release there will be some new features that will allow "skins" to be applied to the application very easily.  These could certainly be candidates for community contributions that could come out of this initiative.  By the way, the open source code is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Whilst this means that we would not want to make the engine code available in the open community we would most certainly be responsive to community requests to extend the API in areas that were requried.

We believe that this model encourages a certain discipline of coding against a set of APIs which we believe should help in the future when new releases of the engine are provided with new features.  We seek to guarantee backwards compatibility so migrations to new versions should be painless.

Licence details are at http://www.konakart.com/documents/LICENSE.txt

Anyway, I wish you every success with this.  We would certainly be happy to publicise this on our web site and keep involved - especially in the cases where the community requires new features from the engine.

See you in Kailua-Kona      (I was there in October 1991 for the Ironman)

Regards,
John

Hi Florin,

We can add the PayJunction to our to-do list but there can be no guarantees when it willl be completed.

If you want it quicker, and are willing to contribute a nominal sum, please write to "sales @ konakart.com".

Regards,

John

[OpenCms module for KonaKart]

We have developed an OpenCms module for KonaKart.  OpenCms is a professional, easy to use website content management system. OpenCms helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain beautiful websites fast and efficiently.

The purpose of this module is to demonstrate how the eCommerce / shopping cart functionality of KonaKart can be integrated into an OpenCms application. The approach taken has been to use the KonaKart SOAP Web Service in order to call the KonaKart APIs from an OpenCms application. This allows for the applications to be installed in completely separate locations for maximum flexibility. 

The module includes some JSPs which display products retrieved from the KonaKart online demonstration (running on the KonaKart web site) through the SOAP API . This means that you do not even have to install KonaKart in order to see the module in action. All you need is a running OpenCms system. Further details on the architecture and on how to install and run the module, can be obtained from the module documentation.

The module is in the final stages of testing and should be available for download during the week beginning 12th November.

Hi kaanyamanyar,

I was trying to make an Eclipse project in order to do a custom interface. I am planning to make a rich interface with ajax where you can update your cart without refreshing your page and so on.

Great idea.  This is exactly what I would do if I had more time 

I did all the settings in order to have a development enviroment. I removed konakart_custom.jar from libraries since I assume that all the sources in that jar are given with folder named "example".

But I can not compile the sources in example due to missing libraries, for example "com.konakartadmin.bl.KKAdmin" can not be resolved.
Can you help me with that

What I'd like to do is to inform you that in the 2.2.0.8 release we have renamed the "examples" directory to "custom" and provided build.xml files for all the examples and custom code that you are working on.   Please be aware of this and maybe you should rename your examples directory to custom in preparation for the next release?  I attach the build.xml for the new structure (it belongs under "custom") which will build the two custom jars and hopefully solve your missing library problem.   (The classpaths defined include all classes under the libs of konakart, konakartadmin and common/lib, which is more than it actually needs but helps simplify maintenance).

Also if I open a project in sourceforge.net which aims to have great looking interface and uses konakart engine, are there any jsf/iceface developers to contribute?

We wish you every success with this project.  Please let us know if you have questions about KonaKart as you go.

Good luck!

John

Hi Mirko,

That's good to hear and very useful feedback - thanks and good luck!

ciao,
John

Hi Costis,

Your requirement to automatically register on multiple shops is an interesting one.

Your idea of the database trigger sounds like a good idea and could be configured to handle the updates as well - if, for example, the user changes his address details after he's registered.

Another possibility is to use our APIs.   On registration you could call the registerCustomer function on each of the shops in the community.  You would have to use the SOAP API to jump out of the current JVM but this would be easy enough to do.    You would have to replicate the customer details updates in a similar fashion.

It sounds like you have an interesting project there.  We'd be extremely interested to hear any details that you can share on the project as we're keen to hear how people are using KonaKart in many different ways.

Regards,
John

Hi Costis,

It's a great piece of software you've made!

:-) glad you like it.

These 5 files seem to be obfuscated and looks like each one is for a different browser, so the changes there have to be
made 5 times.... poor Chinese programmer   

You're right there.  This is what GWT generates.  I think it's a great tool however, providing an easy way to produce AJAX applications that are portable across the popular browsers.  No-one wants to write complex javascript for different browser quirks...

Now, i want to create two levels of administrators. The high-level should have access to all configuration options,
meaning that she can access the entire menu, and the low-level administrator should only be allowed to add categories
and items.

Do i also have to modify the obfuscated javascript 5 times, in order to do that, or is there a better way?

I have some good news for you!   

In final testing at the moment is a very flexible system for defining role-based security in the Admin App.   You can define roles that specify access levels (Insert, edit, delete etc) for each panel, then assign these roles to users.  I'm sure it will solve your requirement (and plenty more besides). 

We wouldn't want anyone to have to edit those huge javascript files :-)

The role-based security is just one of a collection of new features for the next release of KonaKart - the 2.2.0.7 release.

We anticipate making the new release available within two weeks.

When the new release is available we will send notification to everyone registered for the newsletter on this forum.

Regards,
John

This is the section dedicated to questions about programming KonaKart.

One of KonaKart's strengths is the availability of an extensive range of flexible open APIs that allow you to control KonaKart in many different ways.   All of the demonstration applications on the KonaKart web site and in the download packages use these APIs.

There are direct Java APIs and SOAP APIs.

WSDL is available at:
http://www.konakart.com/konakart/services/KKWebServiceEng?wsdl (Application SOAP interface)
and:
http://www.konakart.com/konakartadmin/services/KKWSAdmin?wsdl (Admin Application SOAP Interface)


If you download and install KonaKart, you can access your local copies of these WSDL descriptions at:
http://localhost:8780/konakart/services/KKWebServiceEng?wsdl (Application SOAP interface)
and:
http://localhost:8780/konakartadmin/services/KKWSAdmin?wsdl (Admin Application SOAP Interface)


Before posting, please check:

• the FAQs about the KonaKart APIs:  http://www.konakart.com/apiexamplesfaq.php


• known problems with your particular release: http://www.konakart.com/knownproblemsfaq.php

This is not a KonaKart question but a DB2 question.

I suggest you Google for "How do I create a user in DB2".

John