Show HN: Open-Source Rails Point of Sale

http://websitescenes.github.io/pushvendor/

by websitescenes • 12 years ago

27 25 12 years ago

websitescenes.github.io

Buetol• 12 years ago

Is there any screenshot or publicly accesible demo ? The linked page doesn't give much information

When I actually finish, I will do all that stuff. I would say I am about 80% done. Trying to figure out how to make it easily extendible. I will probably use generators to facilitate custom module generation. Once those are done. I will write docs, etc. I may have jumped the gun by posting it here in its current form; Still I thought someone might find it interesting.

ondiekijunior• 12 years ago

I have been involved in writing Unicenta POS an open source java point of sale, have you looked at it?

LukeWalsh• 12 years ago

This is something I'm 100% behind. As a developer who works integrating with point of sales systems this is an industry ripe for disruption. The pain of integrating is killing innovation in retail. Whether it will be open source or someone like square I look forward to an industry standard in the future.

websitescenes8• 12 years ago

I 100% agree with you. I have had client after client be limited by their point of sale and I have just had enough. I just want a simple web based solution that is easy to deploy and plays nice with standard API's. Thanks for the motivation Luke.

SheepSlapper3• 12 years ago

I couldn't agree more. A few years back I wrote integrations for various Micros/Aloha POS systems, and it was painful. The industry as a whole seems to be stuck in the 90's.

sandGorgon• 12 years ago

could you talk some more on what is so painful about this ? I'm looking to join a startup that is looking to play in this space (in India) and I'm wondering, from a noob POS guys/experienced developer perspective, what the challenges are ?

is it that vendor docs are poor or is it something else ? I would like to think that system software integration is always trickier than .. say web API integrations.

wil4212• 12 years ago

Part of the problem is customer not wanting to update systems already in place (update to a new version of Aloha).

I work for the company that makes Aloha and I can see the newer products we are offering yet not many restaurants I frequent seem to be using the new versions.

We also make one for small business called Silver but I dont know how much has caught on.

xpop2027• 12 years ago

This is awesome, looking forward to the progress and contributing!

websitescenes8• 12 years ago

Contributing!? Really? That would be awesome. I have not worked with others via Github before and would be very interested in doing so.

al2o3cr• 12 years ago

Neat project. A couple code-reviewish notes:

* why use protected_attributes in an new Rails 4 project? I'm curious what motivated this decision.

* if you're destroying records, you'll want to look into using the :dependent option to has_many to make sure you clean things up. However, you may want to carefully consider where in the app "deletion" actually makes sense; anything that winds up in an accounting system probably shouldn't be deletable at all.

* get the tests running. The version on Github has a controller test for "ZusersController" which doesn't appear to exist in the application...

* a minor thing, but it'll drive future contributors crazy: hard tabs vs. soft tabs. Ruby code is usually two-space soft-tabs, but even if you don't agree with that at least be consistent. There are files on GH that are a riot of mixed tabs (configurations_controller.rb is a notable example) and nobody's got time for that.

I'm not the best at catching replies on HN, but ping me on Github (same username) if you want to discuss further.

mtrpcic• 12 years ago

Thanks for someone pointing this out. There are a lot of places in the code that could use some cleaning up. The overall frontend code structure is a little lacking:

* There's a "main.js", and a bunch of empty .coffee files that were presumably generated via a generator. Choose one frontend language and use it.

* Vendor libs should go in vendor/assets/javascripts. This codebase has assets/javascripts/vendor, and then random vendor libs that aren't even in that folder, they're just in "javascripts".

* The frontend code is going to quickly become jquery soup. There's no structure, all code executes on all pages.

* Very minor, but OS specific files should be omitted from git (like .DS_Store)

* Test coverage seems pretty low

* The secret token is public in the git repo (Why not use secrets.yml and keep it out of SCM to be safe?)

There are a myriad of other minor issues as well. It's a good idea for a project, and would help a lot of entrepreneurs out of done properly, but there are some glaring code quality issues here that worry me about the project as it grows.

websitescenes8• 12 years ago

Also really great feedback. I have been programming for only three years so I am still learning much of what you describe. I will be cleaning out the unused template files very soon. Good point on jQuery firing on each page, although I am not really sure why it matters if it has no effect. Processing time? There are no tests but I hope to add some soon. (I have never written any, so I will have to learn)

websitescenes8• 12 years ago

This is very valuable feedback! Thank you so much. I will remove protected attributes. I have thought about deletion and dependents and so forth I just wasn't sure how to address it yet. I must admit, I have completely ignored tests, thinking that I would write them later, but perhaps this is the wrong approach. As for indentations, they show properly on my end in Sublime, I will have to see why they appear differently in the repo. Again, really great feedback, I may take you up on a further discussion.

iagorodriguez• 12 years ago

I found this project really interesting. Forked it. It might be interesting to create platforms like this for the very commmon uses-cases: ecommecrce, blogging, CMS. Currently there are solutions for all this use cases in the rails community but imo they are pretty directed. I mean, they are "difficult" to modify. I would like something like rails composer where you can configure the basic elements of the platform without custom generators.

Show HN: Open-Source Rails Point of Sale

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