I've got a very basic ecommerce website going. I'm struggling to come up with a method of dealing with shipping.
Most of my goods fit into one of two categories and have a clear fixed rate. Let's call them fresh goods, perishable and sent via express courier and I have two rates depending on where you live.
Then I have 'general merchandise', some are tiny and can be sent for $10 others heavy and cost $100
I don't have access to an API to calculate this and don't want to hard code rates based of itemID's etc.
I'm thinking of having a weight saved in the DB, and then doing a lookup once over 5kg charge X, once over 10kg charge X.. or once over X item count charge Y.
Are there any other ideas or suggestions