Web-Based Order Ahead¶
Web-Based order ahead is available for partners who do not have a API available. The web application will be loaded inside a web-view in the customer application with a Javascript interface exposed for providing customer contact information and payment details.
Important: web applications must allow for a "guest checkout" experience to support web-based order ahead.
Web applications must also provide support for the Aston Club Web Payments Javascript API.
Ideally each site for a merchant should have a unique URL, for example: https://orderahead.com/merchant_x/site_y
or https://orderahead.com/merchant_x?site=y
.
This improves the user experience for the customer by not having to reselect the site/location when the begin an order ahead flow.
In order to process a payment the web application needs to determine the Aston Club merchant ID. There are two methods for this:
- Pass the ID as a querystring param, for example:
https://orderahead.com/merchant_x/site_y?aston=507f1f77bcf86cd799439011
. In order for this to function correctly, the web application must prevent the user from browsing/selecting other stores/sites since this ID is tied to a specific store. If this cannot be prevented try options 2 or 3. - Maintain a mapping of stores to Aston IDs locally in the order ahead application.
- Configure the local order ahead ID for each store in LOKE's back end, then use
orderStoreId
in the payment call, instead ofmerchantId
. This is the least preferred option as it introduces an extra configuration point for each store, and also introduces an element of brittleness and poor UX where a configuration error will not occur until a customer reaches the final stages of an order (if the mapping is not configured).