Introduction > Understanding X-Cart > 

Technology

From the technological viewpoint, X-Cart is a PHP/MySQL-based web application using Smarty. After installation, this application runs on a web server and can be controlled via a web interface. This means that users can access the online store powered by this application from anywhere in the world provided there is an Internet connection and a web browser.

Of course, most people who will use your store will not care about the technical details; however, what is perceived by the users as simply browsing the store pages and selecting options is in fact a much more complicated process.

For those of you interested in the behind-the-scenes side of things, every page of your store is generated by X-Cart application in response to requests from the users’ browsers. When a person working with your store submits information through the application's web interface, his or her web browser forms a request to the web server where X-Cart software is running; on the server, X-Cart’s PHP code processes the browser request and connects to the MySQL database server to request retrieval of the necessary data from the store database (in some cases, data may also be written to the database); Smarty template engine finishes processing the request and handles output presentation. As a result, X-Cart generates a web page which the user sees from his web browser as a page of an online store’s storefront or back-end.