django-cart or Satchmo?

Question

I'm looking to implement a very basic shopping cart. Satchmo seems to install a lot of applications and extra stuff that I don't need. I've heard others mention django-cart. Has anyone tried this Django app (django-cart)? Anything to watch for or any other experiences?

Answer 1

Seems that a new version of Django-cart has been released on 25th March. http://vaig.be/2009/03/django-cart-released.html

Wonder how the new version fares with respect to Satchmo.

Answer 2

I think the reason there aren't really many out-of-the-box solutions is because most people who use Django are power users. They tend to want to roll out their own solutions, especially considering how easy it is to do in Django.

To answer your question, DJwarehouse is the only other cart I'm aware of.

Answer 3

I am using django-cart and it is not really an app - it is a start of an app. There are no views, and it totals about 150 lines of code. There is no doc but it is pretty clear how to use most of it. I am a little unsure of the intention of ItemManager or how that is supposed to be used. Comparing it to Satchmo is like comparing a flea to an elephant. They are a little different.

Answer 4

As mentioned above, Django-cart hasn't been updated in a long time so it is most likely not compatible with Django 1.0 and the more recent versions of Django. For that reason alone, I'd recommend sticking with something more recent.

I'm biased because I'm a dev on Satchmo but I think the feeling of overkill with Satchmo is a bit overblown. You'll probably be surprised at all the things you think you'll want to do with your "simple cart." Soon it may not be so simple.

Worst case, if Satchmo is too much you can yank out the parts you don't care about.

Answer 5

Well if you want to use django-cart you should view it as a starting point for developing your own. The last commit (r4) for the project was November 2006.

By comparison, the last commit (r1922) to Satchmo was a couple of hours ago.

With Satchmo you get code that is under active development and actually used by real e-commerce sites.

If you develop your own you're running the risk of alienating customers and losing money. If you use Satchmo you can spend more time developing/improving other areas of your site.

I bet you can already guess my recommendation :)

As for the apps and other stuff in Satchmo I can tell you, from personal experience, that you don't need to include them all in your INSTALLED_APPS setting. I don't remember exactly what I pared it down to, but there were only around 6-7 Satchmo apps in my INSTALLED_APPS and they were all ones I needed. I think they've done even more modularization since then.

Answer 6

Satchmo has more features than django-cart. If you are looking for simple and lightweight shopping cart application, try django-carton which is pretty similar to django-cart.

It helps with shopping cart operations such as adding and removing items. It's does not implement views, templates nor payment processing modules - you are free to build them your way. The cart lives in the session, not in the database. The cart items are arbitrary product objects so you can define your product model the way you want.