Can web app do this?

Targets Web
1

I’ve been thinking of creating a new project and I wanted to know if creating a xojo web app is the way to go.

Here’s the workflow I’d like the app to handle:

  1. User create their own account
  2. User places order
  3. User sends their pdf files to app
  4. App processes user’s files and processes the order
  5. App sends confirmation email with server created pdf files (invoices or estimates etc…) attached and a confirmation link
  6. User receives email and clicks on confirmation link in their email client
  7. App is launched in browser and displays a web page unique to the order
  8. User confirms the order and enters credit card info and clicks pay/process
  9. App processes payment and order and emails the owner of the website so he/she can physically process and ship the order

I was thinking this app would be processing 1-200 orders like this per day

So, is there anything in this workflow that stands out as being something a Xojo web app cannot handle?

2

No 4. is not specified. What kind of process you are talking about? Just uploading or do you want OCR a PDF file?
All other points should run without problems. For dealing with PDFs and Paypal payments I would suggest 3rd party xojo plugins.

3

Just receiving the files and saving them on server for admins to download later.

[quote=58276:@Tomas Jakobs]
All other points should run without problems. For dealing with PDFs and Paypal payments I would suggest 3rd party xojo plugins.[/quote]

Plugins sound fine but I’m not sure I want paypal. Are there other ways to receive payments using Xojo web apps?

4

I don’t see anything too out of the ordinary.

You’ll probably want a helper app to do the ‘real’ processing and let the web app handle the interaction with the user. Assuming you’re using a DB server there shouldn’t be any problem with the 2 apps sharing sharing data. If the processing is minimal you could probably have the web app do it but if it takes a large number of cycles to complete I think it would probably be better in a 2nd app. You could start with just one to see what it’s like and split it out if it’s too much.

We’ve gotten Authorize.Net working in web and desktop apps.

5

This is a good idea. What about hosting the app(s). I’m sure there are many (or rather ‘several’) services that could host the Xojo web app. But what about the helper app? Or do you mean the helper app would somehow be the second app as well.

Thank you, I will check this out.

6

I have implemented Saferpay (European payment provider) in a webapp:
http://saferpay.com/index_en.html

Life testing (a real payment), just the Saferpay Xojo webapp (In German):
https://rabten.com/cgi-bin/do/handler.cgi

7

Here in Germany I am using Jiffybox / Domain factory a big hoster with virtual Linux Servers (I am using Ubuntu) located in Munich but basically every hoster with dedicated or virtual linux hosts should do the same job well. It’s important that you have root privileges on this machine.

8

Helper apps are like background services. They do certain jobs like watching a Folder and processing new Files, or heavy number crunching. It’s the best way to keep a webapp with dialogs and UI clean and responsive so a user doesn’t need to wait for something. Try to look xojo’s Introduction and programming eBooks. You will find a lot of hints and Best-Practise advices there.

9

Or simply looking at a table in a database looking for new records to process. Or you can use Inter-app communications to tell the helper app it has something to do. There are a number of ways to do this.

10

Mr. Kinney:
Do you sell the library or code to process payments through authorize?

11

[quote=185485:@Andres Montoya]Mr. Kinney:
Do you sell the library or code to process payments through authorize?[/quote]
No. Sorry, this was for a consulting client.

I suppose we could attempt to replicate some of the work (it’s been several years now) but getting it into a public state can be a lot of work all by itself.

12

[quote=58291:@Oliver Osswald]Life testing (a real payment), just the Saferpay Xojo webapp (In German):
https://rabten.com/cgi-bin/do/handler.cgi[/quote]

I get an error 404 :frowning:

13