A Ruby on Rails-Framework-Based E-commerce Information Management Platform Design of Enterprise 1 Hongmei ZHANG, 2 Yuanyi ZHANG 1 School of Electron and Information Engineering, Ningbo University of Technology, ecenter@163.com 2 School of Architecture, Fuzhou University, zyye@fzu.edu.cn Abstract Started from the demand of e-commerce platform in the enterprise, this paper analyzed the key technologies of the Rails framework in-depth, and combined with the advantages of the Rails framework, to design an e-commerce information management platform of enterprise based on the Rails framework. Finally, the testing of system platform and the comprehensive testing of various system functions were validated via the Selenium, Selenium on Rails, and the Internet Explorer. The results show that through the system platform, on the one hand it can strengthen the standardized management of enterprise sales, improve the management level and the information degree of enterprise marketing, on the other hand, it can rational use of human and material resources to effectively manage the business and relationships, shorten sales cycles, reduce sales costs and increase revenue, to enhance their market competitiveness. Keywords: E-commerce, Rails, MVC Framework, Information Management 1. Introduction As China's market economy matures, the competitive pressures faced by Chinese enterprises is growing,enterprises are to survive, to improve the efficiency of internal management, make full use of internal resources, it must continue to expand sales channels and to expand consumer groups, improve the competitiveness of enterprises. With the advent of the era of information, the e-commerce information management platform of enterprise became the windows to external display product information, and to engage in business activities. How to set up an e-commerce information management platform to expand their business through the Internet, has become a focus of the development of modern enterprises [1]. With popularity of Internet technology in international trade, the demand of electronic commerce information services keeps expanding, and the platform of electronic commerce information services has become a key factor in the international trade information management in China to optimize the operation mode of international trade, increase trade opportunities and improve the international competitiveness under global economy integration and information society development [2]. The development of business e-commerce information management platform is quite complex, this complex addition to the technical complexity, there is also the industry itself complex. The rules for each industry are difference, such as the car rental industry [3]. It is different from the general commercial sales in industry. It has its own rules of the industry. Therefore, it resulted in more difference of the information systems of all kinds of enterprises. The demand of a good business e-commerce information management platform is not only a wealth of industry knowledge, but also a lot of people work together. Therefore, this paper will analyze the key technologies of the Rails framework in-depth, and combine with the advantages of the Rails framework, to design an e-commerce information management platform of enterprise based on the Rails framework. Through the system platform, on the one hand it can strengthen the standardized management of enterprise sales, improve the management level and the information degree of enterprise marketing, on the other hand, it can rational use of human and material resources to effectively manage the business and relationships, shorten sales cycles, reduce sales costs and increase revenue, to enhance their market competitiveness. International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology(IJACT) Volume5, Number1,January 2013 doi: 10.4156/ijact.vol5.issue1.64 587
2. The key technologies of Rails framework At present, most people use JavaEE to develop Web platform. However, with the diversification of the demand, continue to join the various components and the gradual expansion of the XML configuration management files make JavaEE application systems become bloated, and increasingly unable to meet the needs of developers in the development and running speed. With the increasingly wide range applications of Web and the continue development of Web development technology, developers urgently need a framework to simplify the development process, reduce development effort and improve development efficiency. Rails is a Web framework which used Ruby programming language and open source Web application [4]. It was different from the existing complex Web develop framework, it is a Web framework which is more realistic and more efficient, it has the advantages of rapid development system of PHP and the advantages of structured programs of Java [5]. Therefore, Rails has been subject to widespread concern in the industry since July 2004 when it proposed at first. Generally speaking, there are four key technologies of the Rails framework [6,7]: (1)The Stacker MVC framework: The advantages of using the MVC architecture is that the code can be clearly separated into different logical parts, they are easy to develop, understand, maintain and control. It will not affect the code of the other layers while development in a layer. (2) The agreed rules: Rails used variety of naming conventions (such as conventions) that web applications has accumulated for many years, to instead of the XML configuration file. And the association between objects can be achieved according these conventions in Rails internal mapping and discovery mechanism. (3) Generator mapping: Rails used real-time mapping technique and meta-programming technique, which eliminates the troubles to write lots of boilerplate code developers in the development process. (4) Supporting system: The supporting system of Rails can create any database table automatically that contains the standard CRUD operations and front view. The developers can quickly and easily manipulate the data in the database table via supporting system. 3. Design of e-commerce information management platform based on Rails framework The main function of e-commerce information management platform based on the Rails framework is to realize information management of online shopping. So the core function of the system platform is to achieve the online sales capabilities to expand business sales channels, product expansion and consumer groups and to enhance their market competitiveness of enterprises. 3.1 The structure of system According to the analysis of the system requirements, we know that Rails-framework-based e-commerce information management platform of enterprise can be divided into three layers in accordance with the application: the database layer, Web server layer and the user interface layer. Figure 1 illustrated the structure diagram of system. Figure 1.The structure diagram of system 588
In addition to storing the product information, the database server can provide goods queries, updates, transaction management, indexing, security and multi-user access control and other services for enterprise users and customers. The Web server is a computer which located in the Internet, when the client browser connects to the server and request to browse the merchandise, the Web server will process the request. Then send the product information to the browser of client. The client (Client) also named as a client, it is a computer that connected with server, and providing with local service for customers. 3.2 Database design MySQL is an excellent open source database management system, which is fast, and easy to use. And Ruby on Rails framework integrated MySQL database interface directly [8]. Therefore, this article used the MySQL database management system to create and manage the background database. After analyzed the demand of e-commerce information management platform based on the Rails framework, the system platform included five entities: product type entity, product information entity, product orders entity, customer entity and administrator entity. Table.1 illustrated the information table of product orders entity. Table 1.The information table of product orders Column name Data Type Explanation OrderID Int Orders ID OrderDate Datetime Date of orders generated BooksFee Float Costs of the products ShipFee Float Transportation costs TotalPrice Float The total cost of order ShipType Varchar(50) Mode of transport ReceiverName Varchar(50) Name of recipient ReceiverPhone Varchar(20) Phone of recipient ReceiverPostCode Char(10) Post code ReceiverAddress Varchar(200) Address of recipient ReceiverEmail Varchar(50) Email of recipient IsConfirm Bit Sure or not IsSend Bit Delivery or not IsEnd Bit Acceptance by recipient? AdminID Int Merchandiser ID ConfirmTime Datetime Confirm time 3.3 An e-commerce information management platform design of enterprise A Rails-framework-based e-commerce information management platform of enterprise consisted of foreground system and background system. Foreground system was used for customers to browse the product information online, and the background system was used for the enterprise managements to manage product information. 3.3.1 The implementation of foreground system After the customer successfully login, he or she can see the product information of the enterprises sold, including product brand, model and specifications, manufacturer, price and so on. Customers can choose their favorite products, and added to the shopping cart. Figure 2 illustrated the flow chart of foreground system. 589
Figure 2.The flow chart of foreground system Therefore, from the view point of customer, besides the customer can easy to access product information, the more important point is to facilitate the purchase of products as far as possible. Therefore, the function of foreground system is to display product information for the customers and to realize the shopping cart management. The implementation of the shopping cart is the key technology of the Rails-framework-based e-commerce information management platform of enterprise. It used to display and manage the shopping information of users. Users can view and edit product information through the shopping cart management module. The main function of shopping cart is to add items to the shopping cart, browse the merchandise in the shopping cart, modify the information of the products in the shopping cart, remove the products and empty shopping cart. The shopping cart module realized to add product purchase record to the database, through add List_product to the controller file admin_control.rb. The code segment is shown below. def list_product # Call the paginate method to return the product object of the current page and the paginator object # Assigned to the @ products and @ products_pages # Pages in the product object will the press OrderTime (products order time) column in ascending order, then the product_id (product ID) column in ascending order # And the first page of a maximum number of records is set to 5 @ products_pages, @ products = paginate (: products,: order_by => 'OrderTime, product_id',: per_page => 5) end The system calls paginate method which provided by the Rails, to return the product object and paginator object of the current page (used for paging settings), these product objects sort accordance with OrderTime and product_id. And each page displays up to 5 records in the paginator object. Then it will assign to the two instance variables:@ products_pages and @ products which are returned by product object and paginator object. It realized to add destroy_product methods in admin_control.rb controller file, to delete a product record from the database. The code segment is shown below. def destroy_product # Find the product object which specified product_id, and delete the object product.find (params [: product_id]). destroy # Redirect to list_product Action redirect_to: action => 'list_product' end It needn t to add any additional code in Model files. Customers choose a purchase record from the products page, and click "Delete", and click "OK" button in the confirmation prompt window. You can see that the purchase record has been deleted. 3.3.2 The implementation of background system From the view point of enterprise managers, the functions of background system include product information management, order management and customer relationship management. Product 590
information management not only can allow the managers to increase products, delete products, and modify products, but also to search and manage the products with specified conditions through the search function. For example, the enterprise manager can search the highest-selling products in a certain period of time. Figure 3 illustrated the flow chart of search operation. Figure 3.The flow chart of search operation Open a command window, and execute the command ruby script/generate controller product in the development directory. If the command is successful executed, it will generate a controller file and product_controller.rb which is located in the directory / app / controllers. We should add the code below to the file of product_controller.rb. class ProductController <ApplicationController def search # Create the format that object using, which 4c1ddb5cfb851d566a9039d450c6bb4a7 is API Key product = product.new 4 c1ddb5cfb851d566a9039d450c6bb4a7 the render: partial => "the customer": Collection => product.customer (: tags => params [: tags], : Per_ page => '15 ') end end The main function of orders management is to management and tracking the orders which placed by the customer, dynamic grasp the progress of orders and completion, enhance operational efficiency in the logistics process, thus saving operating time and operating costs, and improve the market competitiveness of enterprises. The main function of the customer relationship management is to managing customer information resources, and to provide satisfaction products and services for customer, and to establish long-term stability, mutual trust and close relationship between enterprise and customers. Figure 4 illustrated the flow chart of background system. Figure 4.The flow chart of background system 591
4. Testing of system In order to validate the overall function of whole system, first we used the Selenium and Selenium on Rails to testing automatically. The core of Selenium was implemented by JavaScript. It can be run directly in the browser without run in another process. Therefore, the scripts which written by Selenium can issue an order similar to the mouse click, thus simulated the interaction between client browser and Web applications, and the interaction between the manager browser and Web applications [9]. For example, we can write a script to simulate customer login E-commerce Information Management Platform of Enterprise, and select commodity in the products display area, then click the "ADD TO CART" button to submit. At this time, Selenium can check whether the sending is correct through the next display page. All of these actions were achieved through the Selenium commands. Figure 5 illustrated the flow chart of customer login. Figure 5.The flow chart of customer login After the end of the automated test, we used Internet to access the home page of the system platform. Figure 6 illustrated the home page of system platform. In Web Application without separate Active X were able to realize so that the users could feel that as if they were using Window Application [10]. The information page which used to display the products information will not be overloaded, the page will not be refreshed, only a partial update. It because of the program used the Ajax technology of the Rails framework. Customers can click the product photo in product information display module, to enter the shopping cart management page directly. 592
A Ruby on Rails-Framework-Based E-commerce Information Management Platform Design of Enterprise Hongmei ZHANG 2Yuanyi ZHANG Figure 6.The home page of system platform Finally, the comprehensive testing of various system functions was validated via the Internet Explorer. The results show that the system platform can strengthen the standardized management of enterprise sales, improve the management level and the information degree of enterprise marketing. And it can rational use of human and material resources to effectively manage the business and relationships, shorten sales cycles, reduce sales costs and increase revenue, to enhance their market competitiveness. 5. Conclusion With the development and popularization of the Internet, the new way to shopping online has gradually been accepted by many people. It quickly changed or even replaced the traditional concept of shopping. Online trading as a new business model is also been applied to the competition for more enterprises. The e-commerce information management platform of enterprise designed in this paper, make full use of the advantages of the Rails framework, and overall reduced business costs, and speed up the response speed of the market, thus greatly improving the quality of service and competitiveness. 6. Acknowledgment This work is supported by Scientific and Technological Development Foundation of Fuzhou University No.2009-XY-13, and the Educational Technology Research Project of Zhejiang Province No.JB064. 593
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