Katmando is Back!

Katmando is being reworked as a Windows Universal Platform application. As part of the reinvention of Katmando we have decided to target Magento 2 as the initial eCommerce platform. Further platforms will be added once we have gone live with this one.

Advanced Replacement for WSI Import Tester

WSIClient

I have been using the WSI Import Tester from AspDotNetStorefront for some time when testing out new XML messages or just trying to figure out some functionality and always wished I could save the connection settings and reload XML test cases more easily.

This desire has grown into the build of an entirely new Windows Client that does everything I need. I suspect there are others that would like something similar so I intend to release the program for free to anyone that asks for it.

It is now ready – you can read all about what it does on the WSI Client product page along with a link on how to download a copy for free.

Edit Topics in ASPDotNetStorefront with Windows Live Writer

As a side effort to the BackOffice and Katmando projects I have built a blogging interface to ASPDotNetStorefront that lets you edit all the topics using Windows Live Writer. This is full WYSIWYG editing of topics inside the template and skin of your website. All you need to add is a few lines to your home page template, a DLL and a new ASHX page. Really simple!

Watch for pictures and more details coming soon!

Katmando Enters the Final Stretch

Katmando_Category_Product

After a long period of development Katmando is nearing completion. Now in Beta test it is holding up well. In addition to catalogue management a data grid has been added to allow quick access to key product data as a single view, slicing across all categories. This is excellent when you want to make quick updates to a price or inventory amount without having to click through a category tree.

Katmando_Product_Grid

This entire program relies heavily on the rich API provided by the web services extensions to ASPDotNetStorefront. Shortly I expect to return to the BackOffice development effort with a lot of lessons learnt!

Katmando – or BackOffice Lite!

A branch project was kicked off a while ago to produce a lightweight version of the BackOffice program to support just catalogue management. The first release of this has gone into test customized to work with the bespoke data model for eSeeds.com. Looking good!

Katmando

eSeeds.com uses the concept of Vectors to group products of a similar type and this version of the program understands this special relationship and displays things accordingly.

Once this is completed and shipped work on BackOffice will continue.

Catalogue Management Taking Shape

The initial framework of the catalogue management module is taking shape. The interesting part is that I am using the MVVM (Model – View – ViewModel) pattern here with two views sharing the same set of ViewModels and, subsequently, Models. This means that edits in the TreeView are reflected in the Form Edit View without having to write any new code!

CatalogueEdit

So far I can navigate the category/product/variant tree and edit the category nodes. Later I will add the product and variant editing capabilities. Then, we need to add the ability to create nodes and move them about in the tree.

More to come.