My Recent Orders on home page, outside of user dashboard - magento

Question

I need to know if I need to create a widget for something like this, or just add a recent orders block to the home page layout.xml.
it should only reflect order for that store.
I know that the user has to be logged in for this to work, but there could be some cookie magic applied to detect the user, and display a short list of recent orders, without displaying the items, which I think is not a massive privacy / security issue.
This is for use in a mobile app, where space is limited, and quick links are helpful...
There will then simply be a link to reorder / view as in the dashboard, and that view would require a descent login.
What is the best way to go about it, if at all possible.
this is a Paypal app, and the recent orders are seen via:
http://www.sitename.com/storename/jsonsales/order/recenttemplate?s=2752732063744
Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

On top of my head, what I would do is create a custom module with observer to catch when order placed, trigger the process of storing the order in the cookie (e.g. last 3 orders?)
Then just create a block in that module to read the data from the cookie.
After that render that block into the template (either via editing appropriate .phtml or create your own .phtml and add it inside layout.xml).
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

For those that might want to try this, with a module called Paypal order Ahead.
Because this is a paypal specific web app, I was able to do this using the javascript functions calling the json templates.
On the /app/design/frontend/paypal/test/template/cms/index.phtml I added the following:
<div class="content-box greybg recentordercontainer">
<div id="productError_<?php echo $sid; ?>" style="display:none"></div>
<div class="page-title text-title"><?php echo $this->__('My Recent Orders'); ?></div>
<div id="recentorder-list-box_<?php echo $sid; ?>" class=""></div>
<div class="cart-empty" id="cart-empty_<?php echo $sid; ?>" style="display:none">
<div class="box-shadow">
<div class="error-desc cart-row2" style="margin-top:10px;"><?php echo $this->__('You have not yet made any purchases.'); ?></div>
</div>
<div class="pay-now" id="contshop_<?php echo $sid; ?>">
<?php echo Mage::getStoreConfig('checkout/options/continue_shopping_text'); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Then I added some javascript in the script section at the bottom of this template:
getRecentOrderBlockJSON("<?php echo $sid; ?>")
function getRecentOrderBlockJSON(id) {
$.getJSON(storeRootUrl+"/jsonsales/order/recent", function(jsonObj) {
renderRecentOrderBlock(jsonObj,id);
});
}
function renderRecentOrderBlock(jsonObj,id) {
var dataObj = jsonObj.recentorder;
// Recent Order Item box target
var ulObj = $("#recentorder-list-box_"+id);
// Display error message on top
if (jsonObj.messages.error.length >0) {
var pdObj = $("#productError_"+id);
var tplHTML = $("#ErrorPageTemplate").html();
for (key in jsonObj.messages) {
var re = new RegExp("%"+key+"%", "g");
tplHTML = tplHTML.replace(re,jsonObj.messages[key]);
}
pdObj.append(tplHTML);
$("#productError_"+id).css("display","block");
}
// have recent order
if ( dataObj && dataObj.length > 0 ) {
for ( var i=0; i<dataObj.length; i++ ) {
var tplHTML = $("#RecentOrderFrontTemplate").html();
// date
var re = new RegExp("%created_at%", "g");
//tplHTML = tplHTML.replace(re,dataObj[i].order.created_at);
tplHTML = tplHTML.replace(re,dataObj[i].order.created_at_localetime);
// update id
var re3 = new RegExp("%id%", "g");
tplHTML = tplHTML.replace(re3,dataObj[i].order.id);
// update rid
var re4 = new RegExp("%rid%", "g");
tplHTML = tplHTML.replace(re4,id);
ulObj.append(tplHTML);
// Recent Ordered Item box
var orderObj = $("#order-list-attr-"+id+dataObj[i].order.id);
} // for
}
}
And that gave me the list, provided that there was a cookie called ppmeccookie, with the value of your customerid. This cookie normally gets generated when you have done a paypal checkout before, using this paypal App.
Thanks for the help.