Customers will purchase electronic docs through the cart, and once the purchase is complete, I need to code a solution to customize the docs, and email the output to the customer. I can have Shopify sending all the pertinent information in the order to my email, but need a server or something to "catch" that, decipher the information I need, customize my docs, and then deliver (via email) back to the customer.
Just looking for guidance on where I can learn more about building out this type of solution. Recommended applications, software, etc?
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I'm a fairly new web developer and I have an ecommerce website that integrates EasyPost to create and print shipping labels.
EasyPost has an API. Also, in each shipping label, I see a JavaScript object (I think) that displays buyer_address... "email": "example#gmail.com",, which tells me that the email information is there.
My question is somewhat general in scope: What steps would I need to take to go about creating this automation? The website is built in Webflow, so I don't really have a "codebase" or "repository" to store whatever code is needed to build the automation.
Since the buyer email is making it into EasyPost with integrations already in place, I feel that I could create a simple program that emails the tracking number to the buyer email every time a label is generated, or perhaps when package is shipped, without the program needing to interact with Webflow or other integrations.
I attempted using Zapier, as well as Make.com. Neither worked, and OrderDesk doesn't have a way to send tracking number emails.
It looks like Webflow has some kind of support for Webhooks (https://webflow.com/feature/create-webhooks-from-project-settings). EasyPost offers webhooks for free as an add-on service. Basically, with webhooks, EasyPost would send tracking events to Webflow proactively, but Webflow (or you) would need to manage the logic for what to do with those tracking events after they are delivered.
EasyPost Webhook Guide
I'm unaware of any off the shelf products that could do this for you without writing any code. We have a guide that details how you might accomplish this with Ruby (you could then follow this as an example for any other language): https://www.easypost.com/email-tracking-tutorial
A few suggestions:
Integrate something into Webflow if possible (I'm unfamiliar with the platform so couldn't say).
Build a simple script that runs on a schedule (cronjob) that retrieves your trackers from EasyPost and sends an email to customers if they have not yet received one. To your point, this approach wouldn't require interacting with Webflow at all and could be done with some local code running on a server and just your EasyPost API key.
I've created a simple UI for EasyPost: https://github.com/Justintime50/easypost-tools-ui, it could be interesting to add this particular use-case as a feature to that project. If you're interested, feel free to open an issue on GitHub for the repo listed here and I'd consider it.
You'd use easypost's API webhooks, to detect when shipment tracking information is provided, or package information is updated.
https://www.easypost.com/docs/api#trackers
It looks like it has a lot of states, so you can keep the client updated regarding the package status from the moment the tracking # is assigned;
EZ1000000001 pre_transit
EZ2000000002 in_transit
EZ3000000003 out_for_delivery
EZ4000000004 delivered
EZ5000000005 return_to_sender
EZ6000000006 failure
EZ7000000007 unknown
You can install webhooks from these docs.
To send the email, you can use an automation service e.g. Make to capture those webhook events, and then compose and send an email to that customer. I like MailJet for that purpose, because it has excellent template support and you can send from your own company domain. But there are many email-sending options.
A bigger challenge, maybe, is getting the email address to send to. I didn't spot it glancing through the Trackers or Shipments data structures, and I am primarily seeing physical address info.
If EasyPost is not tracking the customer's email with the shipment, you may have some challenge in that you'd need to capture the client info through Webflow's order webhooks, and then associate that with EasyPost's shipmentid, and store those in a reference table.
Many automation services offer database-like functionality for this purpose, or you could use e.g. google sheets ( columns webflow OrderID, easypost ShipmentID, customer Email ) or airtable for that purpose.
But you'd have to look into the Easypost integration as well, and you may need to make that integration manual so that you can acquire all 3 of those pieces of information at the same point in your business data flow.
Are there any guides, documentations, tutorials, examples, ... anything about writing custom shipping carriers for Odoo.
I checked their store and most of the bigger ones (DHL, UPS, etc.) are being sold so there is nothing really to use to check "how they did it".
I have a carrier that I need to integrate and they have an API that I can use.
What is the right approach?
Kindly please suggest me the best way to single page checkout for Shopify store. As Shopify doesn't support any customization to the checkout page. Our requirement is to create a single page checkout. let me know how it is achievable.
Basic Shopify does not support customization in the checkout page. It is only available to Shopify plus Customer. Please visit here for more information.
You want a single page checkout you may need to create your own checkout process which will again require your store to be a Shopify Plus store. However, there are many Apps which can help you with single page checkout. You may want to use one of them if you don't want to build the whole functionality. You may want to check the below conversation - Link
You should not use Shopify if you want to make your own Checkout. Shopify is a hosted platform and they no longer want to let people play with the cash register themselves.
Of the few Apps that remain that do offer checkout outside of Shopify, you can see the hassles involved for customers. Why not just roll your own? If you can do your own checkout, hook up to an open source system instead where you can do that easier.
This is easy enough to do if you have the skills. Basically create an app that has a proxy page and change the theme's links replacing the paths to the checkout with paths to your proxied checkout.
There are a number of ways to collect payment info if you do this including using the draft_orders api to send the customer back to Shopify for final payment (not applicable for single page checkout but sometimes works well with the business reason that justifies a custom checkout in the first place)
You can also create a sales channel app that works much like the proxied app concept but has some more api capabilities.
However you really need a good business reason for doing this. Single page checkout was fashionable a few years ago but I've had as many customers go away from it as go towards it. Shopify has done quite a lot of work on their checkout and it works well (i.e. is fast and efficient) on all their supported platforms. Creating a custom checkout means your stuck maintaining it and are potentially increasing your liability if you take credit cards but have not received PCI certification.
I am looking to build an online storefront that will contain digital software which requires licenses to activate.
I'm curious if there's some sort of process after purchase/checkout in Shopify (perhaps through an ability to tie into our company's internal API to retrieve a license and assign it to a product id), then present this to the user through email or on Shopify's checkout/download link directly?
That is indeed a very common pattern in Shopify. When a customer purchases a product, you can hook up some scripting code to inspect the order. When you find a case of needing to issue a license, the script can ask your system (via an API) for a license and send it to the customer however you want (via email for example). There are many ways to skin this cat.
Here is what I'm trying to accomplish:
Three different products-- each one consists of online content, housed within a unique folder.
The customer purchases one of the three products, and receives a username/password (or it could be some sort of dynamic link that expires) for that product.
I am not a programmer, but I know enough to get myself in trouble. I thought I could find a simple script where I would just have to change a couple of parameters and be good to go. Surely this has been done before, right?
I need something that will somehow send the info to a payment processor (PayPal is preferable, but Google Checkout could be an option too), generate a unique password or code and email it to the buyer, and of course communicate to the folder where the product lives so that the password/code will work.
Am I crazy? Is this something that I need advanced development skills to pull off? I have been looking at open-source shopping carts to see if one of them has this functionality built in, but haven't been able to find anything.
There is a PayPal script that is supposed to do this, but I have tried working with it before and it is a real pain...I'm not even sure ultimately that it will work the way I want it too.
Any suggestions are most welcome!
From your description it looks like you are trying to sell digital content.
Both Google Checkout and Paypal have frameworks in place that allow you to securely sell and deliver digital goods.
Please have a look at the doc below for Google Checkout Digital Delivery:
http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/Google_Checkout_Digital_Delivery.html