[bop-devel] Python gateway module

[Jo Rhett]

First, about half an hour after my last post I realized that I was  
tossing a random stream of consciousness posting at you with no  
qualifications or warning or really any notice that I don't care much  
more than rambling out loud about this.  So please accept my apology  
if I rubbed you wrong.  It wasn't meant that way.

Comments are inline...

On Aug 23, 2006, at 5:20 PM, Ivan Kohler wrote:
>> Given that BOP is roughly halfway done
>
> Personally, I thought it was reasonably complete when I took it over
> four or five years ago, and I've always felt it needed maintenance,  
> some
> refactoring/cleanup and refining rather than any sort of major
> development.  What did you have in mind?

Well frankly, a more unified interface would be good.  I'm honestly  
not a user of this.  I developed our own common interface to all of  
the different payment gateways we support.  When I found that there  
was a open source project trying to do this, I jumped on it ready to  
get out of the business of being the sole maintainer of ours.

So I have testbeds with both of ours side by side, and I am still  
intending to go forward on switching over.  But the "clear good  
reason" for doing it has fallen by the wayside when I realized that  
using the BoP modules required more if/then/else around which payment  
gateway we were using than our own stuff did.  Not much more, but no  
clear advantage in making the change.

That said, you've got better support for shipping options, the  
security codes, and stuff that I still haven't gotten around to  
implementing.  So I still need to go forward.

bleh, not an answer is it?  Sorry.  I guess I'm saying that to make  
BoP a real obvious no-brainer, it really should do a better job of  
hiding the destination API from the application.  (which is hard for  
all of the human-source and silly banking stuff that I mentioned  
before, but I think it could be done better)

> 2. I don't personally think its anywhere *near* as intractable as the
> doom-and-gloom picture you paint, Mr. Little.  Half the supported
> gateways could supported with server/port/path, a straightforward  
> set of
> field remappings, and a few other switches.  A week or two of  
> busywork.

Yeah, I totally agree.  You can get 95% of the functionality right  
away.  But if you're talking about a true representation of all  
available functions and modes, business card processing, security  
options, etc it's that last 5% or really the very last 2% that will  
make your life a real bitch :-)

And not doom-n-gloom, I just *personally* and *speaking for me* think  
that it's not really worth the effort involved in trying to maintain  
something like that.  You are obviously welcome to try and hell I may  
even pitch in.

But personally, I'd rather toss another major revision into the BoP  
stuff and really hide as much of the "which payment module are you  
using" in the modules, and less in the application.  It will require  
a major version change because the invocation methods would probably  
all change, etc and so forth.  That, to me, and for just me and my  
own personal goals, would be more worth the effort.

-- 
Jo Rhett @ Lizard Arts
velociRaptor Racing #563