Chrome extension for Hobby King

[pakerfeldt]

So, after losing two fairly large shopping carts on Hobby King I came up with the idea of writing a Chrome extension which I've been working on now for some time. Along the way I've come to realize there's wishlists on HK which solves parts of the problem though. But I figured this Chrome extension could help out in other ways besides composing a shopping list.

Firstly, a screen shot of the current status.



The extension recognizes if the URL points to a product on HK. If so, an icon appears next to the URL. From there you can see your shopping cart and add to it. You'll see the current price and stock level. You can also get notifications when items are close to being back ordered or get notifications when items are back in stock. Another idea I had the other day was that users could create shopping lists and sharing them on their own website. And when someone browses that site (with the extension installed) you could simply copy the entire shopping list. Could be neat for build logs and such. Also, shopping carts synchronize automatically between all your Chrome browsers.

A fairly big issue though is the inability to convert the shopping cart to an actual shopping cart at Hobby King. You would have to go through the labour of clicking each of the items in the list, to go to the product and add it manually. But maybe Hobby King could iterate on their API to allow for shopping cart modifications as well which would be awesome.

So, what do you think? Completely useless piece of crap or something to continue developing? At least I find myself shopping through HK over several days (or even weeks) before I commit to an order, and that's when I want a reliable shopping cart with some extra bonus features.

 

[joshuabardwell]

I would love it if the plugin would remember whether I prefer to order from global or US warehouse. It's so annoying to constantly have to switch.

 

[pakerfeldt]

I would love it if the plugin would remember whether I prefer to order from global or US warehouse. It's so annoying to constantly have to switch.

That might actually be possible. I'll dig into it.

 

[RoyBro]

+1 for continue to develop.
+1 for warehouse preference.

And if you need a beta tester...

 

[Tritium]

I want a universal cart that will accept items from all warehouses then split it into separate orders if required for each warehouse.

Don't want much do I?

Thurmond

 

[pakerfeldt]

I like the ideas!

 

[pakerfeldt]

Here's something to try out: [old version, see next post]
After installing it, if you visit a product page on HK a small icon should appear to the right within the URL field. Press it to open the extension popup and from there you should be able to:

* Add product to cart
* See description, quantity, price, stock level status and grand total
* Switch to another shopping cart, rename and delete carts

There's still a lot of stuff to do but at least there's something to try out. I've been in contact with HK about shopping cart support in their API. They have directed the question to the right department so I'm still awaiting a response.

edit/
Oh and this is how you install it:
- Go to chrome://extensions
- Drag and drop the hkcart-0.0.1.crx file into the Chrome window
- You might have to enable "Developer mode" (not sure about this one)

Please let me know your experiences. Keep in mind this is a early version.

And one last thing, if you have the knowledge and desire to create a nice looking icon for the extension, please send me a PM.

 

[pakerfeldt]

Here's 0.0.2: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3ELdcX3yGj-SFJhNG55dnJZOVE

The biggest update is warehouse awareness. It detects alternative warehouses and you get to choose from which warehouse to buy from. It also shows each warehouse in the shopping list. The file grew in size quite a lot since I added a font library with icons. One of them is used for the throbber shown when a row is refreshing.

You also have access to two temporary buttons.
Clear cache - clears the local cache, next time the popup loads it will fetch product status from HK.
Clear mem - Delete all your carts and contents (will not prompt!)

One relatively easy feature for the future is to split one shopping cart into multiple ones sorted by warehouse.

Note that I haven't put much effort into any nice design right now.
I will also open source this library later, when I've reached a sort of stable state.

Would love to get some feedback!