I've been bouncing ideas around in my head as I'm trying to integrate FedEx shipping rates (and looking at the commerce UPS module), and there a few features I think might be worthwhile for the actual shipping module. At least as optional addon modules to it. Just wanted to know what everyone else thought.

1. Shipping Origin Addresses

Allow multiple origin addresses so other modules like UPS don't have to handle this, as it is common functionality. Better to centralize it.

An origin address can be an entity with an addressfield field type. Users can then add as many as they want, and other commerce modules could take advantage.

2. Shipment Information

Have a standardized way of creating a "shipment" entity, that can have a tracking number attached (and other information), which is then attached to an order. An order can of course have multiple shipments attached to it.

To me, both of these make a lot of sense to include in Commerce Shipping, at least as optional sub modules.

Comments

jazzdrive3’s picture

jazzdrive3 commented

I also mean to say, that I would be happy to help work on these and submit patches. However, I just wanted to get a thread started and see if these were actually good ideas, improve upon them, and if this is one of the directions that Commerce Shipping should go in.

rszrama’s picture

rszrama commented

Yeah, I like where these are going. I'm not sure to what level this module should concern itself with creating "shipments" with tracking numbers, because that leads down the rabbit trails of line item references, partial fulfillment, returns, etc. That's not to say we can't just set a strict limit for what this module might support, but it was something of a never-ending, never complete feature in the Ubercart Shipping module.

As for shipping origin addresses, we probably should figure something out here. Without a store entity (hopefully remedied in Commerce 2.x) we'll just have to use a single purpose entity and maybe allow Rules to do the selection of the appropriate source address for any given shipment.

jazzdrive3’s picture

jazzdrive3 commented

So it seems like a separate "shipment" or "fulfillment" module is in order here. I'll have to think harder on that one.

Regarding origin addresses, that's what I had in mind. Do they make more sense being part of the Shipping module (or included sub-module), or as a separate module altogether.

googletorp’s picture

googletorp commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I'm going to mark this as fixed.

If we do decide that expanding shipping might be a good idea - we can always reopen this issue or create a new.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.