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Abstract

Almost every store built in IBM WebSphere shares the common premise of having a location. The intent of this document is to provide a way to integrate a store locator feature in any store website by providing live Maps of stores available near your requested location. As an instance we have implemented a Store locator in WebSphere Commerce using MapQuest Site Advantage™ Web Service [1].

Introduction

In this article, we will demonstrate how an existing IBM WebSphere Commerce application can provide Store locator functionality and their corresponding Maps for stores near a user’s requested location directly by connecting to MapQuest Site Advantage™ Web Service. By virtue of that one can incorporate the zip locator functionality in their store.

IBM WebSphere Commerce automates and integrates online marketing and sales processes across multiple channels. Moreover, it is very helpful so that you can easily develop a highly secure, scalable online store. WebSphere Commerce can be used for any or all of a company's business models and touch points. It is the single, unified platform you need to do business directly with consumers, with businesses, indirectly through channel partners - or all of the above simultaneously [2].

Site Advantage Web service facilitates developers to integrate maps, driving directions and location searching into applications. The nucleus of the system is a MapQuest-hosted server that provides features for maps, driving directions, and location searching. The Web service’s interface enables integration with any enterprise system. In this case, we are using standard TCP/IP network connections and HTTP protocol to exchange data and images in standard formats.

Requirements

Since the basic idea is about integrating store locator with WebSphere Commerce server, we will show how to deploy store locator on Commerce Server. In order to understand this document the user must have some knowledge about J2EE, XML, Web Service and web development and IBM WebSphere Commerce. However, you can use other J2EE servers such as tomcat, BEA or others.

We are using WebSphere Commerce Express Developer Edition 6. We require an existing Commerce application and then all you need is an account with MapQuest Server. After opening a MapQuest account you will receive a ClientID that helps in authorizing your account over MapQuest server for each request sent. Moreover, a DNS entry is required to resolve server called from WebSphere Commerce Server (WCS). Furthermore, WC server IP must also be registered with MapQuest as well for security purpose.

Assumptions

Before we get started, let's go over the technologies and other requirements needed to set up our Store Locator. The assumption in this document is that our Stores locations data is loaded into MapQuest hosted server in advance and Store Locator act as client to that server that uses MapQuest Site Advantage APIs to search and list our Stores locations, maps and driving directions. Moreover, we are avoiding the intrinsic pains for transforming XML using XSLT. Therefore, we need a framework for binding XML data to Java objects that can lets us work with data from XML documents using our own class structures. We have used open source framework called JiBX that is downloadable from http://jibx.sourceforge.net/. This has circumvented the need for handling XML translation and encapsulated all the details of converting data to and from XML based on your instructions.

Developing the client side

As stated earlier, we are using WebSphere Commerce Developer Edition 6 that can only be installed over WebSphere Studio Application Developer. However, one can use other Integration Development Environments (IDE) of choice. Now for establishing communication with the MapQuest Web service we need to write a binding xml to understand the XML received. Below we have provided the snippet of the binding file for our received XML decided with MapQuest.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<binding>
<mapping class="com.royalcyber.commerce.mapquest.Distance" abstract="true">
<value style="attribute" name="units" field="units" usage="optional" />
<value style="text" field="distance" usage="required" />
</mapping>
<mapping name="point" class="com.royalcyber.commerce.mapquest.PointType"> <value name="x" field="x" usage="required" />
<value name="y" field="y" usage="required" />
<value name="data" field="data" usage="required" />
<value name="recordId" field="recordId" usage="required" />
</mapping>
<mapping name="rollover" class="com. royalcyber.commerce.mapquest.Rollover">

For binding, first we need to compile our classes made for the binding then run the following command from the command prompt location where the above binding class which is MapQuestBinding.xml reside.

java -cp .;C:\WCToolkitEE60\workspace\bin;C:\lib\;C:\lib\jibx-bind.jar org.jibx.binding.Compile MapQuestBinding.xml

Here we are setting the class path in the –cp flag for .class file location for mapping classes and libraries of JiBX available.

After Binding the XML we could easily communicate with the MapQuest web service by calling the server for store map, list of available store for a zip code and driving directions.
So let’s begin, assuming that you have published the sample store ConsumerDirect from CommerceAccelerator and imported some sample data. So right click Stores\Web Content\ConsumerDirect and make a folder called “ZipCodeLocator” and create in it.
The following JSP snippet can be use as sample.

CODE 1 (StoresLocatorForm.jsp)

<html> 
<head><title>Stores Locator</title></head>
<body>
<form name="SearchLocationForm" METHOD="POST" ACTION="StoresLocationRequest">
Keywords  
<input name="textStoreName" type="text" />
<br/>City  
<input name="textCity" type="text" />
<br/>State  
<select name="textState">
<option value="">select a state</option>
<option value="AL">Alabama</option>
<option value="AK">Alaska</option>
<option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
</select>
<br/>
<input name="textZipCode" type="text" />
<br/>
<a href="#" onclick="document.SearchLocationForm.submit();">
Search Store Location
</a>
<input type="hidden" name="radius" value="10" />
<input type="hidden" name="units" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="city" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="stateProvince" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="postalCode" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="searchtype" value="1" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

The above code send the request to our SmartDataBean which internally called the setMapQuestRequestURL method to form a MapQuest URL that would be place to call the MapQuest Web service and return an XML document which needed to be parsed with JiBX binding API.

// Created By Danish Najam
private String setMapQuestRequestURL(int requestType, String extraURLParameters) {
this.requestType = requestType;
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
buffer.append( "http://xml.sa.mapquest.com/?clientid=YourIdGotFromMapQuest" );
try {
switch(requestType) {
case SEARCH: // declared as 1 fetched from searchtype
buffer.append(
"&transaction=search&mapStyle=european&maxSearchResults=100&pageResults=100");
buffer.append( "&radius=" + originLocation.getDistance().getDistance() + "&units="
+ originLocation.getDistance().getUnits() );
if(originLocation.getCity() != "")
buffer.append( "&city=" + URLEncoder.encode(originLocation.getCity(),"UTF-8")); if(originLocation.getStateProvince() != "")

buffer.append("&stateProvince=" +
URLEncoder.encode(originLocation.getStater
if(originLocation.getPostalCode() != "")
buffer.append("&postalCode=" +
URLEncoder.encode(originLocatio n.getPo
break;
//. . . Some other breaks conditions which will be shown later as
e MAP: cas
default:
buffer.app
}
}catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return buffer.toString(
}

Later when we need the store list, we would get the list of available stores using following

method getMapQuestAdvantageResponse() after the call dispatched we will going to have an object of AdvantageResponse class, which in turn give us Location class’s Objects collection that does contains all the data saved over MapQuest server for our store.

// Created By Danish Najam
public AdvantageResponse get
{ AdvantageResponse response = null;
//getting XML Response from Map Quest
HttpClient client = new HttpClient() ;
PostMethod method = null;
try {
// This URL is set after th
method = new PostMethod(mapQuestURL);
//configuring MapQuest Communication client);
String envVariable = System.getProperty ("bs.en
envVariable = "dev";
if (envVariable.equals("dev")) {
HostConfiguration hostConfig =
// SENDING THE MESSAGE AND GETTING THE RESPONSE
client.setHostConfiguration(hostConfig);
} //Un Marshal the response XML
int statusCode = client.executeMethod (metho
if (statusCode == 200) {
String responseBody = method.getResponseBodyAsSt
StringReader reader = new StringReader (responseBody);
IUnmarshallingContext unmctx =
BindingDirectory.getFactory(Searc hResponse.class).create
response =(AdvantageResponse) unmctx.unmarshalDocument (reader, null) ;
}
}
catch(Exc
finally { if (method != null)
//Because MapQuest can not return more then 20 search results at a time,
//Therefore we manually get them.
try {
//check for more results
if ( !response.getSearch().getN
!response.getSearch().getNextData().equals("") ) {
AdvantageResponse advantageResponse = getMapQuestAdvanta
if (advantageResponse.getSearch().getSearchResults().sizeLocationList()
for (Iterator itr= advantageResponse.getSearch().getSearchResults()
.getLocationList() .iterator(); itr.hasNext();) {
Location location = (Location) iter.next();
response.getSearch().getSearchResults().addLocation
}
}
}
}catc
return response ;

After receiving all location in advantageResponse we would render those locations over our
our StoreList.jsp. When a user clicks on particular record s/he will be redirected to StoreDetail.jsp page which renders the Map image by getting the Map URL associated with that particular location by calling getMap() that in essence provide a URL that would be placed over the .jsp pages required to render results.

Conclusion
This article was an attempt to provide the concept for you building a store locator module.
As a result, we had come up with a flexible and extensible application that can be used in a number of ways within a wide range of B2C application domains. The intent of this project was to provide a bridge between the WebSphere Commerce and Mapping services available to for a Store Locator. Since both platforms share a common premise of location navigation. By using this premise, our application not only provides the mapping services for particular store client but also enhances business perspective and more personal shopping experience and boosts the requirements of transportation and shopping decision. With respect to our original goal we have built and demonstrated the Store Locator service as a off the shelf module. As a first step for assessing the feasibility of our goal we have provided the mapping service using MapQuest successfully. This application serves the purpose of our endeavour and shows how a request can be handled and depicted over WebSphere Commerce.

References
[1]http://company.mapquest.com/mqbs/4.html
[2]http://www-06.ibm.com/software/info1/websphere/index.jsp?tab=products/commerce
[3] http://jibx.sourceforge.net/

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