Building Ecommerce Projects with Moltin

• DREW MCLELLAN -
• PHPSW JULY 2015 -

Hello! I’m Drew McLellan. Lead dev on Perch CMS. Publisher of 24ways.org @drewm
github.com/drewm

Ecommerce sucks. Open Source and crappy! Hosted and restrictive! Enterprisey and useless! Bespoke and full of sadness :(

Time spent on wrangling ecommerce is time stolen from fi nessing the UX.

Payment gateways are all di ff erent. (AND MOST ARE TERRIBLE)

Compromise all the way down To gain: O ff -the-shelf functionality Ease of hosted SaaS Choice of gateway Web, app, PoS integration You lose: UX fl exibility Seamless integration Your hair Entire contents of your bank account

What could the answer possibly be?

Moltin is an ecommerce web service API.

Moltin is an ecommerce web service API. Products Inventory Carts Checkout Customers Promotions Shipping Orders & Receipts Currencies Taxes

It works like this

1. Sign up at moltin.com

2. Create a store

3. Get an API key & secret

4. Install PHP SDK with Composer

5. Start building your store

Install the SDK composer require moltin/php-sdk:dev-version1

Instantiate all the things use

Moltin\SDK\Request\CURL

as

Request ; use

Moltin\SDK\Storage\Session

as

Storage ; $moltin

new

\Moltin\SDK\SDK ( new

Storage (), new

Request ());

Authenticate $result

\Moltin :: Authenticate( 'ClientCredentials' , [

'client_id'

=>

'<YOUR CLIENT ID>' ,

'client_secret'

=>

'<YOUR CLIENT SECRET>' , ]);

Get stu ff done // Create a product

$result

\Product :: Create([…]) ; // Update a product

$result

\Product :: Update( '<ID>' , [ 'title'

=>

'Updated!' )] ; // Get a product

$result

Product :: Get( '<ID>' ); // Delete a product

$result

Product :: Delete( '<ID>' );

Forge Dashboard

Checkout

50+ Payment Providers authorize.Net

DataCash GoCardless Mollie NetBanx PayPal SagePay SecPay / PayPoint.net

Stripe WorldPay

Checkout Calculates shipping, taxes, discounts. Adjusts stock levels. Generates orders and invoices. Handles gateway API interactions* 
 


• sort of.

Gateways You don’t get total isolation from gateway weirdness. You can’t just swap one gateway for another. Still needs planning for payment fl ows to call the right Moltin API methods at the right times.

Moltin bills on API requests.

Billed on API requests Free up to 30,000 per month. 300,000 reqs is $49 600,000 reqs is $99 … 5,000,000 reqs $499

So.

Advantages You get almost complete control over the UX. You don’t need to build all the boring stu ff . Multiple apps (website, mobile, PoS, etc) can all use the same backend with no extra work. Swap out your front end easily. Start adding inventory via Forge before site is built.

Disadvantages Creates a very large dependancy compared to something self-hosted. That comes with risk of downtime or service discontinuation. Introduces network latency into many operations. Not as fl exible as something completely bespoke.

Questions?