Hi all,
I was wondering which php based carts will be the easiest to integrate with cakephp.
I've heard about bakesale but I have no info on it whether is up to par with magento, cubecart or other carts out there. It's been a while since they have updated info on bakesale (August 2008). So if anyone has any info how reliable and secure bakesale is or is it better to use other php carts any info wil be appreciated.
I heard phpshop was being re-written as a Cake app - not sure how far along they are... or why they aren't writing it as a plugin!
That depends on how tightly you want the cart integrated with the rest of your Cakephp app.
I have tried Bakesale for online store, and I ended up dumping it for ZenCart after too many complaints from the client. I tried bakesale because it seemed simple, but it was too simple. It is does not have all of the features of a Magento or ZenCart. Some parts of it are unfinished or just plain broken.
Bakesale is a nice Cakephp app but really misses the mark as an ecommerce solution.
The development on both bakesale and phpshop seem pretty dead. I would suggest building your cake app separate and then setting up something like store.mydomain.com using magento. There are still ways of getting them to talk to one another.
Given that Magento is written in Zend, which like CakePHP is MVC framework, you might be better off writing the site in Zend. I've coded in both frameworks and they have a lot in common due to the MVC nature, though CakePHP certainly has more automagic functionality.
Recent, I've released a shopping cart plugin for CakePHP called Kaching found at http://code.google.com/p/kaching-php/. It's a middle ground between Magento and Bakesale. I found Magento tried to make every store fit into the same mold and Bakesale lacked features.
With Kaching you create the store's look and feel by interacting with Kaching's controllers. There is no need to build a store administration because one is provided.
VaM Cart - http://vamcart.com Free Open Source CakePHP based shopping cart