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 ........................

Raheel Hussain : Google Checkout

ASP.NET with Google Checkout - Part 1