Custom Design Tool Integration

We would like to integrate our custom design tool into NopCommerce as a plugin with as little modification to the core code as possible (preferably none).  The problem for us is how to associate a customer created design with a product, add it to cart with the product image being the custom design, and check out.

The one solution I have been able to come up with that involves no changes to core code is to create a new product when the customer initially saves their design and update that product on subsequent saves.  This works, but the only way to restrict that design to the one customer is to create a customer role just for that customer and then restrict the product to that role which results in other headaches (i.e. /Admin/Customer/List becomes unusable...which can be mitigated by creating a custom user management plugin...but how far does the rabbit hole go?).

Of course, this becomes trivial if we just modify the core code to our purposes but we really want to avoid that.  Is there a way to do what we are asking?

Have you looked at product attributes with "File Upload" attribute type?

Check the examples in canvaskudos.com

Thanks for the replies!  Product attributes were actually my first recommendation but the idea was nixed by marketing mainly because they want the custom design to be the product image in the cart.  Is there a way to override the cart without changing core code?

To give you a bit more perspective, this is our current design tool which we are hoping to get into nopCommerce as a plugin.

DoomHamster wrote:

Hello,

Did you acheive to convert this tool in to a plugin?

Thanks

You would have to create a controller that inherits from ShoppingCartController and overrides

protected virtual PictureModel PrepareCartItemPictureModel(ShoppingCartItem sci, int pictureSize, bool showDefaultPicture, string productName)

That will give you the ShoppingCartItem which will have all of the info about the customer and attributes selected.

The PictureModel you return is just the picture URL, title, and alt text to display on that line item so you can make that whatever you want.

Doom, You have a great looking custom design tool that I am very interested in.  Have you or are you planning on creating and distributing a plugin for it?  Thanks in advance.

Just a followup to see if something like this is available?