madmac - 8:29 pm on Jun 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

Look at osCommerce for example. It's written for modularity.

uh.... aside from the shipping, payment, & order total modules/classes, there is nothing even remotely modular about osCommerce.

If it were truly modular, then it would be extremely flexible, because any unneeded features could be removed with a snap by removing that features plugin/module or turning it off (a hard coded switch is not modular and the code remains).

Also because then any custom features you needed, could be easily added by writing a new plugin/module to accomplish what you need.

But you cannot do this in osCommerce or most php eCommerce solutions I have seen. Any system where you have to directly alter the core engine to even accomplish the most basic additional feature beyond what the core engine provides is not modular or flexible. This is exactly why I am writing a PHP eCommerce application, because of the lack of PHP eCommerce apps approaching this level and type of scalability and flexibility.