I have been tasked at my workplace with working out a prototype architecture to suit a small project for 'click and collect' e-commerce. I am working largely on my own, and have been asked to go away and have a think about how best to deliver something as a minimum viable product - even if it's not elegant - something we can build on in the future. There are some interesting requirements though, chiefly the following:
We already have a standard e-commerce site running Magento in the back end. The Magento site manages products, customers, orders, braintree integration etc. However, it is highly customised, old, prone to breaking, and is very complex to develop in. My boss has asked me to investigate whether we could build something that to the customer appears largely to be a part of the same e-commerce site, but in the background is a wholly seperate solution stack, something lean, that does the bare minimum of what it needs to do to fulfill click and collect orders. So identify the customer, browse products, add to cart, place order.
That led me to Umbraco. I decided that working in an entirely new e-comm solution is too heavy considering Magento already does that job. So I started thinking about a CMS solution (in the .NET stack, as that's my background and the skills within my team) that could be extended to fulfill this requirement. The customer could choose click and collect from the Magento site, and be directed to this seperate, isolated Umbraco solution from then on in.
My problem is this: Magento already manages products, customers, product images and so on. I don't want to have to recreate all of that in the Umbraco solution. Ideally, it would be great if the customer could log in via Magento, and then somehow pass that information to the Umbraco solution as the user transfers from Magento into Umbraco. Additionally, it would be great to be able to 'absorb' the products and images from Magento into Umbraco, so we don't duplicate product management etc. Basically, I want to somehow integrate some of the data from Magento into Umbraco, as well as be able to - upon redirection to Umbraco from Magento - be able to maintain the 'state' of the customer, so that when they land in Umbraco, they're already 'signed in' and ready to shop. What are my options here, if any? Or is this a dead end?
Magento 'integration' with Umbraco
I have been tasked at my workplace with working out a prototype architecture to suit a small project for 'click and collect' e-commerce. I am working largely on my own, and have been asked to go away and have a think about how best to deliver something as a minimum viable product - even if it's not elegant - something we can build on in the future. There are some interesting requirements though, chiefly the following:
We already have a standard e-commerce site running Magento in the back end. The Magento site manages products, customers, orders, braintree integration etc. However, it is highly customised, old, prone to breaking, and is very complex to develop in. My boss has asked me to investigate whether we could build something that to the customer appears largely to be a part of the same e-commerce site, but in the background is a wholly seperate solution stack, something lean, that does the bare minimum of what it needs to do to fulfill click and collect orders. So identify the customer, browse products, add to cart, place order.
That led me to Umbraco. I decided that working in an entirely new e-comm solution is too heavy considering Magento already does that job. So I started thinking about a CMS solution (in the .NET stack, as that's my background and the skills within my team) that could be extended to fulfill this requirement. The customer could choose click and collect from the Magento site, and be directed to this seperate, isolated Umbraco solution from then on in.
My problem is this: Magento already manages products, customers, product images and so on. I don't want to have to recreate all of that in the Umbraco solution. Ideally, it would be great if the customer could log in via Magento, and then somehow pass that information to the Umbraco solution as the user transfers from Magento into Umbraco. Additionally, it would be great to be able to 'absorb' the products and images from Magento into Umbraco, so we don't duplicate product management etc. Basically, I want to somehow integrate some of the data from Magento into Umbraco, as well as be able to - upon redirection to Umbraco from Magento - be able to maintain the 'state' of the customer, so that when they land in Umbraco, they're already 'signed in' and ready to shop. What are my options here, if any? Or is this a dead end?
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