I had some free time the last couple of weeks and wrote a pair of e-commerce modules for Xaraya 2. The modules are called Shop and FedExWS. They’re available on my Xaraya Extensions page. My clients don’t generally have much need in this area, since most of them are non-profits, but I felt like trying something new.

If you have any interest in PHP or web development generally, you should definitely have a look at Xaraya 2. The pace of development has been brisk in recent months, with four beta releases and two release candidates. You can download the latest release candidate here. Or, if you’re a monotone user, you can pull the latest development code from com.xaraya.core.jamaica

The Xaraya core has been re-written since version 1 and there are numerous enhancements that will help you build better websites for your clients in less time.

Compared with the two other OS packages with which I’m most familiar — Drupal and Django — Xaraya 2 probably has more in common with Django, even though it’s written in a different language. As with Django, from the developer’s perspective everything is very transparent and at your command. Xaraya and Django just feel more object-oriented than most frameworks, somehow.

One difference between Xaraya and Django: In Xaraya, you create your object templates via an admin interface, whereas in Django you code them in flat files. What I’m calling “object templates” are actually called DataObjects in the parlance of Xaraya; those familiar with Django know them as models. In Drupal, the analogue would be the content type — though the analogy is not perfect.