Satchmo

Since I've been using the Django framework for web development I've been pointed in the direction of the Satchmo framework a few times. Satchmo is intended to be the framework for e-Commerce development built on top of Django. I've looked at Satchmo more than once trying to weigh up whether it would be a useful thing to use for projects, because an e-Commerce framework certainly should be useful. Satchmo doesn't satisfy this expectation.

I have written an e-Commerce shop in Django. It took three days, much of which was spent writing the backend - basket, order processing and so on. I am absolutely certain that I couldn't have done that with Satchmo. The first reason is that Satchmo isn't orthogonal; it's impossible to use Satchmo's basket/ordering system without using Satchmo's products front end. Front ends are very easy to write in Django and I needed something custom for this shop. Custom front ends are very hard to write in Satchmo - they involve writing custom extensions to the product model. The second reason is that Satchmo doesn't use Enterprise Design Patterns like Money.

Satchmo also provides code that is very much outside its remit as a framework, like this strange configuration property which embeds Google Analytics. Google Analytics code is trivial to paste into the templates should I want to do so. Why would I need this built into the platform?

Satchmo doesn't satisfy as a framework; it's more of an off-the-shelf application regardless of what the authors claim. Now I have Django web shop code, I won't be needing Satchmo.