I spent the last two days pounding my head against the monitor thanks to Google Checkout.  The great guys over at ZenPhoto put together a “experimental” (i.e. broken) plugin so that’s where I started.  It turns out that it is nowhere near their fault that the plugin doesn’t work since if you grab the code straight from google, that doesn’t work either.

Initially I was able to get the plugin working by getting the code generated from a google buy now link.  Having the form actually submit I decided to start plugging away at making a very feature slim cart that was really just an array of items stored in a session.  After spending a few hours working on it with little to now joy I was finally getting somewhere.  Then something pretty unexpected happened.  I stopped being stubborn and checked out the link my friend sent me that “should” allow quick and easy integration including a decently robust cart.  Wouldn’t you know, it turned out to be extremely easy to implement and after about 20 minutes I had something more usable than what I’d been working on.  A little more time tweaking and I was satisfied enough to leave it alone for awhile.

I posted about this on the ZenPhoto forums in hopes that I can contribute my code back to the project.  After I take a little break from it (Gotta put in a sprinkler system this weekend.), I will come back to clean it up abit and see if there’s not a more versatile way to manage the plugin options.  For now just relax and I’ll post some code later.

Hope you like the preview!