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I just launched my first Rails ecommerce site. It's a site devoted to apparel for wine enthusiasts. It has a shop, and also some social networking aspects. The hardest part was the store section. Dealing with selling t-shirts with all the options proved difficult. I opted to use Google Checkout for the processing.
Check it out at
can you elaborate a little bit on your use of Google Checkout? why did you end up going with it instead of like Paypal or Activemerchant for that matter? what api library did you use for it?
My client wanted a store solution that was very easy for her to maintain. I didn't have the time to roll my own fully featured payment processing system, so I narrowed it down to Paypal, and Google Checkout. When it came down to it, the Google merchant interface was very intuitive and easy to use. Both in the sandbox and in production. Plus Google is .10 cents/10% cheaper than paypal per transaction.
Since the client is just starting out, I used the HTML api of Google Checkout. It was the quickest way to get it going. I would like to continue to refine the site. Especially the ecommerce portion. This experience has motivated me to create a portable store solution similar to substruct. I'll keep this forum posted on it.
The guy that does Peepcode.com has a gem on github that can be used with Google Checkout. I don't know how good it is, but his other stuff is good and he uses it at Peepcode.com so I'm sure it works.
There area a couple of them out there, but little documentation. Do you know which one he uses?
There area a couple of them out there, but little documentation. Do you know which one he uses?
One he wrote.
Thank u. I will check it out once github is back up 
I went and checked, it's up now.
Implementing a Google Checkout Level 2 integration is a huge pain. I hope to blog or make a PeepCode Screencast about it, but it involves:
* SSL on your server
* A state machine to keep track of the half-dozen states that an order passes through before being charged
* An external messaging server or queue so you can send notifications to Google at the right points in time (I use acts_as_state_machine and a cron job that calls a Rake task)
The benefit is that Google is inexpensive. However, many consumers (even developers) prefer to pay with PayPal. PeepCode purchases are about 65% PayPal and 35% Google, but I pay about 4% in fees to PayPal and 2% to Google.
So examine your options and the customers you are selling to. It's nice to offer multiple options for payment.
Last edited by topfunky (2008-07-15 13:54:30)
Implementing a Google Checkout Level 2 integration is a huge pain. I hope to blog or make a PeepCode Screencast about it
I'd be interested in the former. A Screencast would be cool too but I think my 10-pack is about out of credits 
I too would love to see a screencast!
Hi
your site is looking really nice .
E-commerce is very much helpful now a days to make online shopping easy and inexpensive. Mostly people likes online shopping using secure payment gateway like merchantinc.com which is one of my favourite payment gateway that receive payment in as few as two days and have your funds automatically deposited directly into your bank account.
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