From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2004-11-09T04:39:21+09:00
Subject: Re: ecommerce and ruby (tclink)

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 02:23:40 +0900, Ara.T.Howard <ara.t.howard@noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> i have never developed any code that deals with ecommerce whatsoever.  are
> ruby developers out there using
> 
>    http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/tclink/
> 
> ??  seems all i can find on the raa.  is it crazy to do this yourself, or is
> this type of site functionality better farmed out to an existing web service?
> do any of the ruby web framworks deal with this issue directly?

I've not used it, though I'm writing my own packages for doing
financial stuff, including electronic commerce.

I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that there are many
and varied poorly documented standards, and none of the web services
use them.

I'm a happy authorize.net customer, and their post-based interface is
relatively simple, so one can home-brew something adequate rather
easily.

For other services, there's other web-services interfaces -- Paypal
has one, Authorize.net has another, and all the other processors make
their own too.

Then there's the old over-the-wire VITAL protocol, which I haven't
seen a non-commercial implementation of yet, ever, in any language.

I do plan to release my code eventually, when it stabilizes.