§ 22 August 2026 - E-commerce

Over August the sparrow_ecommerce module went from "a cart that talks to Stripe" to a shop you can actually run: carriers and pickup points, four payment methods, order e-mails, a proper Orders desk in the admin and a billing layer that issues numbered invoices. Everything ships inside the base image from Sparrow 7.4.22 on; sites turn the pieces on in settings.

Shipping is now data, not code. Editors create shipping methods in the admin - flat rate, free above a threshold, per-country availability - and the checkout offers them automatically. Three Czech carriers come with pickup-point widgets built in: Packeta (Zásilkovna), PPL ParcelShop and Balíkovna. The customer picks a branch on the map, the choice is stored on the order together with the carrier metadata, and it prints on the packing slip.

Cash on delivery is a payment backend with its own rules: a COD fee per method, a maximum order value, and the ability to disable it for specific countries or carriers.

Payment backends are registered per site and toggled per legal entity from the admin, so a shop can offer a different mix without a redeploy:

• Bank transfer - the confirmation page and the order e-mail carry a Czech SPAYD QR code (account, amount, variable symbol), so paying from a banking app is one scan.
• Stripe - cards, Google Pay and Apple Pay, webhook-confirmed.
• PayPal - hosted checkout with webhook reconciliation.
• Comgate - the Czech gateway for cards and bank buttons.

Wiring is a settings dictionary; secrets stay in the namespace, never in the image:

SPARROW_ECOMMERCE_PAYMENT_BACKENDS = {
    "bank_transfer": {
        "class": "sparrow_ecommerce.payments_bank_transfer.backend.BankTransferBackend",
        "label": "Bank transfer",
    },
    "stripe": {
        "class": "sparrow_ecommerce.payments_stripe.backend.StripeBackend",
        "label": "Card / Google Pay (Stripe)",
        "api_key": os.environ.get("STRIPE_SECRET_KEY", ""),
        "webhook_secret": os.environ.get("STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET", ""),
    },
    "comgate": {
        "class": "sparrow_ecommerce.payments_comgate.backend.ComgateBackend",
        "label": "Comgate",
        "merchant": os.environ.get("COMGATE_MERCHANT", ""),
        "secret": os.environ.get("COMGATE_SECRET", ""),
    },
}

Orders get sequential numbers instead of random tokens, and every status change sends an e-mail - confirmation, paid, shipped - from templates the site can override. The Orders listing in the admin got an inspect view and one-click actions: mark paid, mark shipped (with tracking number), cancel, refund. Shipments and internal notes live on the order; the customer never sees the notes.

Prices finally read like prices: the new money template filter formats amounts with the currency (79 Kč, 1 234,50 Kč), the cart shows formatted totals and a proper Continue to checkout button.

The same module now carries the back-office billing we use for hosting: persistent customers with tax IDs, subscriptions and their renewal invoices, domain registrations, one-off invoices for project work, and store identities - several legal entities, each with its own invoice number sequence and bank details. Invoices render to PDF with the SPAYD QR code and can be issued from a "New invoice" menu without leaving the admin.

Two new documentation pages walk through it: Running the E-shop and Payment & Shipping Integrations.