ASP.NET with Google Checkout - Part 1

Raheel Hussain — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:45:00 GMT

Google Checkout is a fast and easy solution for online Buyers and Sellers, and getting popular vert fast.

Recently, I had a chance to integrate the google checkout with one of a website I developped.

The site is already integrated with the Local Mashreq Bank Merchant Account of UAE, for local UAE sales.

The sales for the international customers however, became a bit issue because of conversion from EURO/GBP/USD$ wasn't the good option at all and caused a drop in sales.

This led them to think of a solution which would encompass both local as well as international market sales. It was fun as well as a good exposure for me.

You can Visit : http://www.1boxoffice.com/

I thought to state down what i've experienced and learnt with it, to help out other developers going to do the same in future.

How Google Checkout Works

Google checkout has following different distinct ways of integration

Third-party e-Commerce Provider - i.e. 3rd Party Shopping Carts
A Simple HTML code for Non-eCommers Plateforms
Google Supported e-Commerce Providers
Customized e-Commerce Plateform i.e. Microsoft Commerce Server, IBM Websphere, (or may be your own custom made Shopping cart)
Sending Invoices through Email.

I'm not going to cover all the options, since the site I did best fits with option #4, which is A Customized e-Commerce Plateform.
I Shoping Cart on the site was custom developped by me.

Under this option, Google provides two different set of APIs

Google Checkout HTML API
Google Checkout XML Developer API
with Order Processing, Order Notification, and Merchant Calculation separate APIs respectively

Since, I had to implement the Order Processing as well as the Order notifications, I chose Option-Two the XML API method.

Note:
The HTML way is even simpler, as this method includes the form hidden variables which are to be posted to the Google Payment Server view the Form Post method. The HTML API is limitted in a way that this is only a one-way integration with Google Checkout system, while comparing with the XML API, it provides a veriety of different tracking and integration options ... discussed below.

You can findout details from the following URL :
http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/google_checkout_html_api.html

Google Checkout XML Developer API

The Google checkout API consist of the following separate sets of APIs.

Checkout API - You can send the Shopping Cart Details to the Google System, additionally you can send discounts, VAT, Shipping Charges etc.
Merchant Calculation API - This means that you provide your order calculation rules to Google for the order, and to implement this API, you must create a web service that calculates these values.
Notification API - By implementing this, your system (website admin) will get notified with, Payment approved/disapproved, order processed/shipped and the customer information such as billing telephone, address etc.
Order Processing API - lets you integrate Google Checkout with your internal order processing systems by allowing those systems to automatically send updated order information to Google.

Further details could be foundout through the following URL.
http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/index.html

Note:
When you sign up for a Google Merchant Account, you are given two options for either signing up for a Sandbox Account , which is basically a Test Account, and allows you to experiment your code in the Test Environment, as well as the Production Account, which you'll have after you go Live with Google Checkout.

Hope that this information was good enough to give a quick general overview Google Checkout API.

My next post, I'm going to write about the steps which you've to perform to enable google Checkout in your application.

Happy Coding ........................

HttpCompression with ASP.NET

Raheel Hussain — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:27:00 GMT

Hi,

I came accross a very good article and have already implemented it in couple of my projects in the company.
As I was working on reducing the size of ASP.NET page, thought this is really worth sharing.

Regards - raheel

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/HttpCompressionQnD.aspx

.NET to run on Mac OS

Raheel Hussain — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:35:00 GMT

Yes, as the title says, .NET will be running on Mac OS systems in the future.

I was searching a different requirement related to my work for Mac OS and foundout this interesting post where Scott Guthrie (Senior Microsoft Official, and incharge of various .NET technologies), and other Microsoft Officials reveal about the future plans.

Here is the URL for you to findout more

http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/archive/2007/01/13/breaking-news-future-version-of-net-framework-to-run-on-the-mac.aspx

Regards - raheel

ListView - The new control in ASPNET3.5

Raheel Hussain — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:17:00 GMT

<Asp:ListView> is the new control in town !

ASP.NET 3.5 coming with this control is probably the popular one.

This supports paging, sorting, insertion, deletion, and all that is not there in the DataList (since Asp.net 1.x, 2.0)

and complete HTML markup control.

When it comes to DataList, which doesnt support paging and sorting operations but support showing
the rows over the columns (Horizontal manner), it is definetely a releif for developers.

Stay tuned to Scott Gu's Blog as more posts are expected on it.

cheers !

Raheel Hussain : ASP.NET

ASP.NET with Google Checkout - Part 1

HttpCompression with ASP.NET

.NET to run on Mac OS

ListView - The new control in ASPNET3.5