I was approached by Tourist Information Centre to integrate a 3rd party bookings system into their existing system, as a part of the website’s revamp, whilst still allowing staff at Bude TIC to continue adding/modifying new pages to the website without interfering with the booking system.

Using the 3rd Party API documentation, I set about creating a bespoke WordPress plugin to interact with the booking data from their system, using PHP as the programming language. This allowed me to develop a page showing which of the accommodations in the system were available to book, for both online and telephone/offline bookings. After a booking has been selected, the data is then passed back up to their system with the parameters  arrival date, departure date and many others for them to process the booking. All this is done seamlessly between Bude TIC and the 3rd Party company. I then created a bespoke availability calendar using the data from the 3rd Party system to make it easier for the pupil when searching for a booking.

The main issue with this project was understanding how WordPress would retrieve its data from the 3rd party system when viewing an individual accommodation. The solution involved mapping accommodation entities in the 3rd party system, to the accommodations posts created in WordPress. This in turn allows accommodations to be created in the booking system, enabling staff at Bude TIC to link it to an accommodation post within WordPress.

Whilst developing the plugin, I made sure all programming standards and practices as set out by WordPress were used. This ensures any future updates to the core of WordPress does not affect the website.

For all your cornwall software development needs, get in touch by telephone or drop me a line to start discussing.