Installation instructions for Find-A-Part Website

 

Brief introduction:

            This Find-A-Part installation will explain how to setup the one webpage that consist of the Find-A-Part website.  Actually, the installation you have is not really the website, but rather a mirror to where the actual web data and functionality are located; however, since the page being opened is located on your computer or domain, it will appear as if you have the software installed.  In technical terms, this mirror webpage consist of a frame, whose contents are located elsewhere.

 

Installation procedures:

1.                  Determine the exact directory location of your web server’s root; that is, find out what web pages are opened when you type in www.yourdomain.com.  If you install Microsoft IIS with its default directory locations, then c:\inetpub\wwwroot is the location.

2.                  If you want this web page to reside I a subdirectory, that is, if you want it to be located or linked to the Internet like www.yourdomain.com/yoursubdirectory/, then create that subdirectory in the web root.  If you wanted your subdirectory to be called parts, you create a parts subdirectory off of c:\inetpub\wwwroot, so that you will have c:\inetpub\wwwroot\parts. 

3.                  Copy the file you received with these instructions into that directory.  This file is called default.htm.   You should have a link for Find-A-Part website.  Under our example, you could open this like via a browser and typing www.yourdomain.com/parts/ and pressing enter.

 

Troubleshooting:

·        Problem:  When I typed my Internet link, I get nothing, just a blank screen.

            Possible solutions:

You have not installed it as you meant to.  Try to read the instructions above very closely.  Remember, your Internet link will be www.yourdomain.com/yoursubdirectory/ .  Also, your web server has a default file that will open if none is specified; in MS IIS, this file is default.htm, so you don’t have to specify the full link name – i.e. www.yourdomain.com/yoursubdirectory/default.htm.  If you are experiencing these problems, try appending default.htm to you Internet links or configuring you web server software to look for default.htm by default.

 

·        Problem: When I typed my Internet link, I get a web page to come up, but the categories pull-down box never populates.

Possible solutions:

Your Find-A-Part access account is not configured properly.  Contact John McDaniel at mcdaniel@optimusparts.com and be sure to include your username and password, in addition to the default.htm file as an attachment, in your email.

The following section is optional, you DO NOT have to use the shopping cart featureto operate Find-A-Part.

 

Optimus Find-A-Part
Creating Button for Add-to-Cart Specifications

Overview
Programming is now in place for licensed Optimus parts distributors using the "Find-A-Part" look-up engine to add a "Send to Shopping Cart" button to the web application and transmit XML information directly to the distributor's shopping cart. This protocol was designed to
accommodate all operating/internet systems and programming languages that use today's standard XML specification and/or support
processing of raw textual information.

Set up Requirements:
To Transmit to Dealer's Shopping Cart:
Optimus parts distributor must create a web page or other processing mechanism, be it CGI or ASP, designed to accept the XML specification shown below. The URL of this distributor created page or processing mechanism shall be submitted by the distributor to Optimus so that
Find-A-Part can do a "Form-POST" the below XML to that URL. Form postings are handled in name value pairs, the name being the name of
the input and the value being the value set for that input; in this case the name is xml, so the form posting would be…

xml=<Root>…</Root>

In ASP, the XML could be retrieved into a variable called theXML by the following code…

Dim theXML
theXML=Request.Form("xml")

The XML below represents the data displayed on the application and posted to the above referenced URL. This XML is sent to the distributor's URL upon being user clicking the Add-to-Cart button. The cumulative state of the cart or basket is maintained by the distributor; that is, if more
than one item is added to the cart, the cumulative list of items and quantities is maintained by the distributor and identified by the primary key of basket_id shown below.

<Root>
       <Item basket_id="What the Optimus' partner has provided">
            <ItemID>AAA</ItemID>
            <Description>Textual description</Description>
            <Quantity>Number</Quantity>
            <Price>Number</Price>
            <DimensionA>Usually a number</DimensionA>
            <DimensionB> Usually a number </ DimensionB>
       </Item>
 </Root>

Notes:
The distributor provides the basket_id value via the querystring value. The querystring's name=BasketID,
so an example querystring might look like this…

(The below example doesn't work in production.)
http://www.unrealcity.com/parts/Home.asp?cn=12,23,432&pw=456,32,89&sid=2&basketid=B6598

XML Data Returned:
After the XML is sent and processed by the customers cart application, you should return response XML in the below form:
<root status="success|failure">
<message>The message that the user is shown via JavaScript's alert() statement</message>
</root>

Note: By defining the success/failure <message>, you, the distributor, control what the user sees.

Custom Pricing:
For custom pricing, Optimus shall provide an Excel spreadsheet of product numbers with your cost and our suggested retail price.
Alter the retail price on items you choose and resubmit to Optimus. The user shall then see only the retail price established for that distributor.

Implementation Details:
Steps for Optimus Find-a-Part distributor:
1. Create page or other processing mechanism to process the established form posting of XML.
2. Distributor should test this, perhaps with hard coded XML, to verify it processes correctly.
3. Distributor needs to notify Optimus of the URL of this processing mechanism.
4. Optimus will then update its various data files and do some internal programming to send and accept the XML information.
This may take a few days.
5. Optimus will send new HTML frame to distributor to insert in web site.