Subscription web/desktop app [PYTHON]

Question

Hi, Firstly pardon me if i've yet again failed to title my question correctly.

I am required to build an app to manage magazine subscriptions. The client wants to enter subscriber data and then receive alerts at pre-set intervals such as when the subscription of a subscriber is about to expire and also the option to view all subscriber records at any time. Also needed is the facility to send an SMS/e-mail to particular subscribers reminding them for subscription renewal.

I am very familiar with python but this will be my first real project. I have decided to build it as a web app using django, allowing the admin user the ability to view/add/modify all records and others to subscribe. What options do I have for integrating an online payment service? Also how do I manage the SMS alert functionality? Any other pointers/suggestions would be welcome.

Thank You

Answer 1

You need to be more specific with what you want. Then you would get some worthwhile responses.

Answer 2

Payment gateway integration:

• Here is a detailed article about how to integrate the Authorize.net payment system into a Django project. Authorize.net is used by a few popular Django projects, including the Satchmo e-commerce store project.
• django-paypal is a pluggable Django app which lets you connect to PayPal merchant services.

SMS alerts:

• django-sms is a Django app which is "...designed to make sending SMS text messages as simple as sending an email." so might be a good start.

General Django

• You didn't mention your knowledge level of Django itself; if you need to brush up on your Django skills I would highly recommend the book Django 1.0 Website Development.

I think it's also worth pointing out that the resources I've mentioned here were all found in the first few results of a Google search for each topic. These are the search terms I used:

• django payment gateway integration
• django paypal integration (because I knew of PayPal beforehand)
• django sms alerts

Answer 3

I'd like to comment on the SMS alert part.

First, I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Django, but I assume it to be just like most other web frameworks: request based. This might be your first problem, as the alert service needs to run independently of requests. You could of course hack together something to externally trigger a request once a day... :-)

Now for the SMS part: much depends on how you plan to implement this. If you are going with an SMS provider, there are many to choose from that let you send SMS with a simple HTTP request. I wouldn't recommend the other approach, namely using a real cellphone or SMS modem and take care of the delivery yourself: it is way too cumbersome and you have to take into account a lot more issues: e.g. retry message transmission for handsets that are turned off or aren't able to receive SMS because their memory is full. Your friendly SMS provider will probably take care of this.