Thank you ezra-g for starting this project. I thought I'd post this as a separate item as the 'Development approach' thread is clearly for (well) developers.

I'd like to put forward my use case and ask whether the proposed Commerce Signup module might be a suitable a solution for my requirements.

Briefly, I organise indoor markets which are held at a number of regular venues on a repeating basis. My products are tables, which I rent to traders on an event by event basis. I usually collect 'rent' on the the day, but I am keen to move to an optional pre-paid model - perhaps dictated by role. For example, regular traders versus occasional traders.

I have reviewed the Drupal 6 version of Signup and as well as it's Ubercart implementation. I like the simplicity of Signup, but currently it falls short of my needs for the following reasons.

1) It only allows for a single registration per event per user. My understanding is that there is no provision for the registrant to specify how may places are needed. In my case, the trader is unable to specify how many tables are required. Or to use another example, as might apply to a theatre booking; an individual is unable to reserve tickets for others.

2) Whilst it is possible to specify limits for the number of registrants (stock control), this value is specified on an event by event basis. I need the limit value to be pulled from the venue content type; the capacity field. This is a common use case - all venues have a capacity. Doesn't this make more sense? Classrooms, theatres?

3) I need to publish a history of attendees of each past event as well as those of each upcoming events. Full views integration is therefore needed.

These are the main points, although there are some others, such as;

- I prefer to work with booked event dates rather than calendars. Unlike a hotel, I am not selling space every day.

- I would like the facility for admin to make reservations on behalf of users - e.g. telephone bookings.

- Where Commerce is concerned, I really do not want to create two instances of everything. Whilst I understand the reasons for products and product displays - I really don't want the pain.

- I like things to be dead simple and so do my customers. The workflow is the same; select the venue, select the dates, sell (or buy) the space.

Dependencies? Probably Node Repeat because of requirement 3). Node repeat has some open issues and also needs porting to 7.

In short I am looking for a simple, space booking system. With support for multiple venues and repeating dates.

So. Does the conversation taking place cover these bases or is the thinking to keep this project, the basic but functional module that it currently is?

Comments

jpontani’s picture

jpontani commented

As it stands now (afaik, talked a little bit with ezra-g), Commerce Signup is going to start as a direct port from UC Signup Integration, just using Commerce API instead (obviously).

I don't think this is going to cover your specific use-case, although there are other existing options available (http://drupal.org/project/bookingsapi) more targeted to your needs. The problem is that I don't think those integrate into Ubercart at all (since they are D6 projects), so there is no real way to collect payment and have them "booked" at the same time without some custom modules being written.

I can say I have a similar problem to yours, although my use-case is quite different. The problem boils down to the way Signup is currently designed. Signup is meant for events that people attend, and is only attached to actual nodes. So, Signup in the case of D7 and Commerce is quite difficult, as Commerce no longer uses nodes for products, instead has a product entity that is referenced via a product display node. While you can enable signups for the Product Display node, it's a lot harder to control signup limitations on a particular product, rather than a particular product display.

I've been meaning to contact both ezra-g and dww (project owner of Signup) and discuss potential code refactor so that Signup allows for Entity API integration to modify entities as well as basic nodes, as this would allow for more extension of Signups away from nodes and more towards entities. I'd also like to see Signups be their own entity, allowing for the creation of multiple signup types (each with their own fields, since entities are fieldable), so as to allow a better selection of what data you want submitted with each signup (rather than attaching these fields to the user profile).

But, I'm digressing. Even if Commerce Signup was what you're looking for, it won't be available for a while. ezra-g is fairly busy, and said it probably won't be until the end of the month to even start porting to D7. I'm trying to spend some time changing it myself, but I also don't have too much free time to spend making a big patch for a port.

mrpauldriver’s picture

mrpauldriver commented

Thank you jpontani

Following your suggestion I've been looking at bookingsapi and eventbookings. It is sort of what I'm after but does seem to cater for quantities. In other words, one can book a table for an event, but I can not see how book multiple tables.

I'm really surprised that there isn't a more suitable module out there, as I would have thought the use-case fairly common.