How to create new pipeline component in Microsoft Commerce Server

For developing order processing pipeline one should have good knowledge on

1. Order processing pipelines and its default components.
2. Dictionary keys used to get various properties and dictionary objects in it. (Ex: orderform has collection of Lineitem objects)
3. Debugging pipelines

1. Read the documentation for good knowledge on order processing pipelines and its components.

Here are few links that help you

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd451499(CS.90).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd451558(CS.90).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd451746(CS.90).aspx

2. Commerce uses dictionary keys to map the properties in the .Net object model to COM orderform object.

For example orderform (or basket ) has property called lineitemcollection this collection is saved as Isimplelist in Orderform dictionary object with dictionary key as ‘Items’. To retrieve this Isimplelist use below line of code

ISimpleList items =(ISimplelist)orderform["Items"];

This mapping of .net class and COM objects is done using pipelinemappings.xml which we can find website physical directory. Apart from these keys there are various keys added at each stage in the pipeline. To know the keys and values at each stage choose any of the below two ways -

• Enable logging of each pipeline and analyse it (How to enable logging – Go to web.config file and look for pipelines tag for corresponding pipeline change the ’loggingEnabled’ attribute value to true. Log will be placed at folder name log in the pipelines folder of application physical directory).
• You can display the contents of the orderform by following this link ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd451239(CS.90).aspx). DumpOrder.vbs can be found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Commerce Server 2007\Sdk\Samples\DumpOrder.

For list of all dictionary keys in orderform for developing pipelines go to below link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dd442188(v=CS.90).aspx

3. Debugging a pipeline is very important while we developing. Download orderform Visualizer tool and install it. To know how to use and where to download find below links

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maxakbar/archive/2008/04/28/orderform-visualizer.aspx

http://www.maxakbar.com/commerce-server-tools.html

Below are max akbar links that guide to create a pipeline component

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maxakbar/archive/2006/08/17/705473.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maxakbar/archive/2006/09/02/736999.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maxakbar/archive/2006/09/17/759555.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maxakbar/archive/2006/09/20/764024.aspx