Cartridge 0.3.3

A Django shopping cart application.

========
Overview
========

Cartridge is a shopping cart application built using the `Django`_ framework.
It is `BSD licensed`_ and designed to provide you with a clean and simple
base for developing e-commerce websites. It purposely does not include every
conceivable feature an e-commerce website could potentially use, instead
focusing on providing only the core features that are common to every
e-commerce website.

This specific focus stems from the idea that every e-commerce website is
different, tailoring to the particular business and products at hand, and
should therefore be as easy as possible to customize. Cartridge achieves
this goal with a code-base that implements only the core features of an
e-commerce site, therefore remaining as simple as possible.

Cartridge extends the `Mezzanine`_ content management platform and a live
demo of Cartridge can be found by visiting the `Mezzanine live demo`_.

Features
========

* Hierarchical categories
* Easily configurable product options (colours, sizes, etc.)
* Hooks for shipping calculations and payment gateway
* Sale pricing
* Promotional discount codes
* PDF invoice generation (for packing slips)
* Stock control
* Product popularity
* Thumbnail generation
* Built-in test suite
* Separation of presentation (no embedded markup)
* Smart categories (by price range, colour, etc)
* Registered or anonymous checkout
* Configurable nunber of checkout steps
* Denormalised data for accessiblilty and performance

Dependencies
============

Cartridge is designed as a plugin for the `Mezzanine`_ content management
platform and us such requires it to be installed. By following the
installation instructions below this should occur automatically.

Installation
============

The easiest method is to install directly from pypi using `pip`_ or
`setuptools`_ by running the respective command below, which will also
attempt to install the dependencies mentioned above::

$ pip install -U cartridge

or::

$ easy_install -U cartridge

Otherwise you can download Cartridge and install it directly from source::

$ python setup.py install

Once installed, the command ``mezzanine-project`` should be available via
Mezzanine, which can be used for creating a new Cartridge project in a
similar fashion to ``django-admin.py``::

$ mezzanine-project -a cartridge project_name

You can then run your project with the usual Django steps::

$ cd project_name
$ python manage.py createdb --noinput
$ python manage.py runserver

.. note::

The ``createdb`` command performs the same task as Django's ``syncdb``
command, and also handles setting the initial migration state for `South`_.

You should then be able to browse to http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ and log
in using the default account (``username: admin, password: default``). If
you'd like to specify a different username and password during set up, simply
exclude the ``--noinput`` option included above when running ``createdb``.

Contributing
============

Cartridge is an open source project that is managed using both Git and
Mercurial version control systems. These repositories are hosted on both
`Github`_ and `Bitbucket`_ respectively, so contributing is as easy as
forking the project on either of these sites and committing back your
enhancements.

Please note the following points around contributing:

* Contributed code must be written in the existing style. This is as simple as following the `Django coding style`_ and most importantly `PEP 8`_.
* Run the tests before committing your changes. If your changes causes the tests to break, they won't be accepted.
* If you're adding new functionality, you must include basic tests and documentation.

Donating
========

If you would like to make a donation to continue development of the
project, you can do so via the `Mezzanine`_ website.

Support
=======

For general questions or comments, please join the
`mezzanine-users`_ mailing list. To report a bug or other type of issue,
please use the `Github issue tracker`_.

Sites Using Cartridge
=====================

* `Ripe Maternity`_
* `Cotton On`_

.. _`Django`: http://djangoproject.com/
.. _`BSD licensed`: http://www.linfo.org/bsdlicense.html
.. _`Mezzanine live demo`: http://mezzanine.jupo.org/
.. _`setuptools`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools
.. _`Mezzanine`: http://mezzanine.jupo.org/
.. _`Github`: http://github.com/stephenmcd/cartridge/
.. _`Bitbucket`: http://bitbucket.org/stephenmcd/cartridge/
.. _`mezzanine-users`: http://groups.google.com/group/mezzanine-users
.. _`Github issue tracker`: http://github.com/stephenmcd/cartridge/issues
.. _`Django coding style`: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/contributing/#coding-style
.. _`PEP 8`: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
.. _`Ripe Maternity`: http://www.ripematernity.com/
.. _`Cotton On`: http://shop.cottonon.com/