Sumit Gupta

Shopping Carts: X-Cart and its template engine

Hi,

As I start working on my X-Cart modification project, I learn few things. One of the most important thing among other is How a bad planning change the Good design patterns.

X-Cart uses Smarty for Template handling. Smarty as you might know is a Template engine by PHP itself (http://smarty.php.net). It is based on concept to make Business Logic seperate from Display Interface.

If you see ASP.Net does the same in almost all respect. But X-cart implementation to smarty is very unique in its kind. I don’t know if they really required that complex file structure for their code. If I have to change the page logic I do need to change the Template files in some cases. And to my experience in Shopping carts with the features that X-Cart provide it can de done with less complexity than X-Cart has.

When I first take a look at Oscommerce, I thought it is not perfect yet, But when I compare it to X-Cart (paid software) with free software like OsCommerce. I thought Oscommerce has much better implementation. Especially with its Template engines module you can easily change design in Oscommerce, But not in X-Cart.

Anyways Both are Good software in view point of End Users. But If you are really looking for software that you want to customize please go with OsCommerce.

Bye for now, I have to test Jaws Framework now, lets hope some good codes from them.

Sumit Gupta

Sumit Gupta

2 responses to “Shopping Carts: X-Cart and its template engine”

  1. Personally, I think OsCommerce’s code base and file structure is even more confusing than X-Cart’s. If I’m not mistaken OsC uses their own templating system. Try and change skins on the fly with osc vs smarty 🙂

  2. Hi Boomer,
    Yes Oscommerce file structure is confusing than X-Cart, But about the templates in OsCommerce, it use its own engine Plus you can use ST-Templates Engine for designing. and this template engine is sort of Cool engine over smarty. Plus Smarty has extra overhead as it try to implements its own language which is just a run time script.
    Like is ASP.Net if PHP use smarty as Module to PHP will make it much faster than what it is.