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Shipping gateways and providers are used to provide shipping rates for a cart. They return the appropriate shipping charge for carts during checkout.Two shipping gateways/providers are included by default, and you can also add your own shipping gateway and provider. Under Shipping Providers, a Shipping Gateway is the specific class that you select (Generic Gateway or Weight/Jurisdiction Gateway).
Classes referred to here are available in the following namespaces:
Refer also to Shipping Methods for related information.
These are the two out-of-the-box options for shipping gateways:
You select the Shipping Gateway in the Shipping Provider screen, and then configure the actual values for that gateway/provider in the Shipping Methods area.
The shipping provider classes interact directly with one or more actual shipping services such as USPS, UPS, or FedEX. It retrieves shipping price information from the shipping service(s) its associated with. One typical scenario would be to have a provider that represents a particular service, for instance USPS.
A provider can also represent a particular type of shipping situation. One example is that you could have a provider for overnight delivery. The provider could retrieve pricing for that service to determine the lowest price given the location of the customer. A provider could also represent other specific scenarios with one or more services such as price by weight or ground shipping.
To provide shipping options during the checkout process, you need to add shipping methods, and each method must use a shipping provider. Below are the steps to create a custom shipping provider and method.
1. Create a separate project in the solution to store custom business logic implementations for your application.
2. Create a class in this project that inherits from IShippingGateway. This interface only has one method, GetRate(). This method returns the rate for shipping associated with the LineItems from the shopping cart submitted for pricing. This method provides whatever interface is required to the actual shipping services/rate provider to determine the shipping cost.
Example: the signature for the method:
public ShippingRate GetRate(Guid methodId, LineItem[] items, ref string message)The return value is a ShippingRate instance, which contains several properties:
Example: retrieving the shipping method ID
ShippingMethodDto methods;
ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow row;
string name;
//Look up payment method
methods = ShippingManager.GetShippingMethods(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name);
//the methodId was passed into the method as one of the method parameters_
row = methods.ShippingMethod.FindByShippingMethodId(methodId);
if (row != null)
name = row.Name;
else
name = "";3. Copy the .dlls associated with the project where the shipping gateway is implemented into the bin folders of both the Commerce Manager and public web sites.
4. In Commerce Manager, go to the Admin tab.
5. Go to Order System/Shipping Providers.
6. Click New.
7. Enter a name for the gateway and a system keyword. The system keyword has to be unique.
8. Select the gateway which implements IShippingGateway you created in the previous step.
9. Click OK.
10. Go to Order System/Shipping Methods/[applicable language].
11.Click New.
12. Fill in the fields for the method, including the name of the provider created in the previous step. To make the shipping method available, set IsActive to Yes.
13. Click OK.
You can create a configuration tab for your shipping method. This will allow you to use multiple instances of a custom shipping provider you create and then set custom parameters for each instance. To do this, you need to create a user control that will render in Commerce Manager as the Parameters tab for a shipping method.
The control you create will create/update/retrieve shipping scenario data about different circumstances based on weight, number of items, and jurisdiction that your custom shipping gateway will use to calculate the shipping rate. Below are the steps to create a configuration tab.
1. Add a new control to your custom shipping provider project. Call the controlConfigureShippingMethod.ascx.
2. Make sure the new control inherits from OrderBaseUserControl and implements the IGatewayControl interface.
3. Add references to your project for Mediachase.Commerce.dll and Mediachase.Webconsolelib.dll.
4. The IGatewayControl interface has two methods and a required property.
Example: methods of IGatewayControl
public interface IGatewayControl
{
void SaveChanges(object dto);
void LoadObject(object dto);
string ValidationGroup { get;set;}
}These two methods are called by Commerce Manager. The DTOobject that is passed into both methods is, in the case of a shipping provider configuration tab, an instance of a ShippingMethodDto.cs. This DTO contains a table, ShippingMethodCase, which holds all of the shipping rate scenarios you store for your shipping method.
The code in the control simply needs to update the ShippingMethodCase rows to reflect each of the scenarios the user adds in Commerce Manager. Commerce Manager takes care of retrieving the data and saving the data back to the database.
Each shipping scenario is a row of data. The framework provides this scenario storage for your implementation. In other words, the scenario data you store for a shipping method in the ShippingMethodCase table will not be used by the framework during the checkout.
Each row of date include these fields:
Jurisdiction groups can be retrieved using the JurisdictionManager.
Example: retrieving jurisdiction groups
//retrieve the data; get shipping jurisdictions, not tax jurisdictions
JurisdictionDto jDto = JurisdictionManager.GetJurisdictionGroups(JurisdictionType.Shipping);
//bind to a dropdownlist
ddlJurisdiction.DataSource = jDto.JurisdictionGroup;5. Implement the SaveChanges() and LoadObject() methods.
Example: minimum code for SaveChanges() and LoadObject() methods
_ShippingMethodDto = dto as ShippingMethodDto;The _ShippingMethodDto is a class member of type ShippingMethodDto. Either in the aforementioned methods or in other event handler methods, data entered by the customer needs to be retrieved/saved to this DTO.
Example: adding and retrieving data from ShippingMethodDto
//Adding a row of data
if (_ShippingMethodDto != null && _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethod.Count > 0)
{
ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCaseRow row = _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase.NewShippingMethodCaseRow();
row.Total = Double.Parse(Weight.Text, _NumberFormat);
row.Charge = Double.Parse(Price.Text, _NumberFormat);
row.StartDate = StartDate.Value;
row.EndDate = EndDate.Value;
//the ShippingMethodDto will only contain one row for the ShippingMethod row, which
//represents the shipping method information stored on the first tab of the shipping method in
//commerce manager
row.ShippingMethodId = _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethod[0].ShippingMethodId;
row.JurisdictionGroupId = Int32.Parse(JurisdictionGroupList.SelectedValue);
// add the row to the dto
if (row.RowState == DataRowState.Detached)
_ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase.Rows.Add(row);
}
//retrieving a row of data to populate controls
//set the properties of the controls in the configuration
//tab
if (_ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase.Count > 0)
{
//in this scenario, we're only supporting a single row
//to serve as a simple example
row = _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase.Rows[0];
txtRate.Text = row.Charge.ToString();
txtWeight.Text = row.Total.ToString();
ddlJurisdiction.SelectedValue = row.JurisdictionGroupId;
}6. Implement the ValidationGroup property. This property is used internally by the framework.
Example: implementing ValidationGroup
public string ValidationGroup
{
get
{
return _ValidationGroup;
}
set
{
_ValidationGroup = value;
}
}7. Build your shipping provider project containing the configuration control. You may separate the shipping provider and the configuration control, there is no need for them to be in the same project except for convenience.
8 .Add a reference to your shipping provider method in the Commerce Manager project, if this has not been done.
9. Copy the ConfigurateShippingMethod.ascx into a new folder under the Shared folder locationApps/Order/Shipping/Plugins/Shipping Method Name. The shipping method name does not have to be the name of the shipping provider, it can be more informational, representing a shipping provider or shipping type for instance FedEx24Hour.
10. Build the site.
11. Go to Commerce Manager/Administration/Order System/Shipping/Shipping Methods/Language.
12. Click New.
13. Configure the new shipping method. Select your new shipping provider from the list of shipping providers, use the same system name as you named the folder in step 9, set it to active.
14. Save the shipping method, re-open, and navigate to the parameters tab. You should see your new shipping provider.
15. Enter parameter information and save the shipping method.
The ShippingManager class allows you retrieve the appropriate case rows, depending on your scenario. This code would be used in your GetRate method, or in a method which is called by GetRate().
Example: retrieving shipping provider information
/the methodId is passed into the GetRate method
DataTable casesTable = ShippingManager.GetShippingMethodCases(methodId, shippingAddress.CountryCode,
shippingAddress.State, shippingAddress.PostalCode, shippingAddress.RegionCode,
null, shippingAddress.City, weight);For more information on how to use this DataTable, see the WeightJurisdictionGateway.cs GetRate() implementation.
You can create packages and associate them with shipping providers. That way you can have a generic package sizesdefined and associated withproduct and then map this generic package to a provider specific package. For example the generic "LARGE" package can map to a 25 Kg Large FedExbox and an USPS Large Flat Rate box.
You can associate them with shipping providers by opening a shipping provider in Commerce Manager, clicking on the Packages tab, and selecting Add Item. You can also associate packages with SKUs by changing the Package property on the Pricing/Inventory tab of a SKU in Commerce Manager.
You can retrieve package information for a shipping provider by retrieving the ShippingMethodDto. This contains two typed data tables with the package information:
Example: retrieving package information for a shipping provider
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto shippingMethods =
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Managers.ShippingManager.GetShippingMethods("en-us");
foreach(System.Data.DataRow row in shippingMethods.ShippingOption.Rows)
{
//A shipping option is a shipping provider
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto.ShippingOptionRow shippingProviderRow =
(Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto.ShippingOptionRow)row;
//now you have access to packages associated with the shipping provider
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto.ShippingPackageRow[] packageRows =
shippingProviderRow.GetShippingPackageRows();
//now you have access to the packages' names and id's
//packageRows[0].ShippingPackageId
//packageRows[0].PackageName
//now you can retrieve the individual Package row with additional information
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto method =
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Managers.ShippingManager.GetShippingPackage(packageRows[0].PackageId);
//the GetShippingPackage method just populates the Package table with the applicable shipping package
if (method.Package.Rows.Count > 0)
{
Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto.PackageRow packageRow =
(Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto.ShippingMethodDto.PackageRow)method.Package.Rows[0];
//here we can retrieve the package properties
//packageRow.Length
//packageRow.Height
//packageRow.Width
//packageRow.Description
}
}Last updated: Oct 21, 2014