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A shipping method manages a set of information and rules that determine the shipping cost and displays it on the front-end site during the checkout procedure. The shipping fee is added to the total price of the purchase. A Shipping Method is mapped to a Shipping Provider, visible to a back-end administrator in Commerce Manager. This lets the public site display friendly names such as Ground Shipping to the customer and this is mapped to a provider such as UPS. Therefore, when a customer picks Ground Shipping, UPS is used.

See Shipping Gateways and Providers for information about creating gateways and providers.

Classes in this topic are available in the Mediachase.Commerce.Orders.Dto namespace.

How it works

  • To add a configuration tab for a shipping providers, create a new .ascx called ConfigureShippingMethod.ascx.
  • This .ascx uses the same inheritance and interface as for the shipping provider.
  • The parameter settings for shipping methods are stored in the ShippingMethodParameter table.
  • See the ConsoleManager\Apps\Order\Shipping\Plugins\ WeightJurisdiction\ConfigureShippingMethod.ascx for an example of this.

    Note: This implementation uses AJAX to update the DTO, as the data occurs (prior to the SaveChanges method being called).

Adding a shipping method parameters tab

You can store and retrieve information in the following ways.

Using the ShippingMethodParameter table

The ShippingMethodParameter table lets you store name/value pairs for settings related to that shipping method.

Example: accessing ShippingMethodParameter table

C# 
if (_ShippingMethodDto != null && _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodParameter != null &&  
            _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodParameter.Rows.Count > 0) 
        { 
            ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodParameterRow row = (ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodParameterRow)_ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodParameter.Rows[0]; 
            txtTypeOfService.Text = row.Value; 
            lblTypeOfService.Text = row.Parameter; 

}

Using the WeightJurisdiction provider

You also can store information in the format you see with in the WeightJurisdiction provider where each row of data represents the following, which is stored in the ShippingMethodCase table.

  • Total (representing the count or weight value)
  • Charge
  • JurisdictionGroupId
  • StartDate
  • EndDate for different shipping scenarios. 

Example: using WeightJurisidiction

C# 
if (_ShippingMethodDto != null && _ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase != null && _ShippingMethodDto. ShippingMethodCase.Rows.Count > 0) 
        { 
            ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCaseRow row = (ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCaseRow)_ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodCase.Rows[0]; 
            txtTotalWeight.Text = row.Total; 
            txtCharge.Text = row.Charge; 
            txtStartDate.Text = row.StartDate.ToString(); 
        }

Accessing shipping information

The following example shows how to display the shipping methods to users and the respective rates for each, based on the current cart.

Example: accessing shipping information

C# 
//Get the list of all shipping methods to be filtered 
            ShippingMethodDto methods = ShippingManager.GetShippingMethods(SiteContext.Current.LanguageName);  

            // filter the list for only methods that apply to this particular cart's shipping address 
            List<ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow> shippingRows = new List<ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow>(); 

            foreach (ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow method in methods.ShippingMethod.Rows) 
                shippingRows.Add(method); 

            List<ShippingRate> list = new List<ShippingRate>(); 
            foreach (ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow row in shippingRows) 
            { 
                Type type = Type.GetType(row.ShippingOptionRow.ClassName); 
                string message = String.Empty; 
                IShippingGateway provider = (IShippingGateway)Activator.CreateInstance(type); 

                List<LineItem> items = new List<LineItem>(); 
                foreach(LineItem lineItem in CartHelper.LineItems) 
                    items.Add(lineItem); 

                if (items.Count > 0) 
                    list.Add(provider.GetRate(row.ShippingMethodId, items.ToArray(), ref message)); 
            }

Storing of information for a selected shipping method is done using the lineitem properties. You do not need to create a shipment object, since the Cart Prepare workflow will handle this.

Example: storing shipping method information

C# 
ShippingMethodDto methods = ShippingManager.GetShippingMethods(SiteContext.Current.LanguageName); 

                ShippingMethodDto.ShippingMethodRow row = methods.ShippingMethod.FindByShippingMethodId(new Guid(ShippingRatesList.SelectedValue)); 
                foreach (LineItem lineItem in CartHelper.LineItems) 
                { 
                    lineItem.ShippingMethodName = row.DisplayName; 
                    lineItem.ShippingMethodId = row.ShippingMethodId; 
                }

Last updated: Oct 12, 2015