The Use of special characters in REF

[EaglesNest]

Hi All,

Could someone please explain to me the reasoning behind Actinic not allowing certain characters in the REF #, for example no *, !, |, _ ....

Perplexed...

Eagle

[NormanRouxel]

When you add a product to the Cart you're submitting a form. The product reference is used (via a hidden field or the submit buttons value) to indicate the item you've chosen.

If that was all it did (and you only bought one of everything) you could use any character in there.

However certain fields like Q_<REF> O_<REF> are used to indicate the Quantity, Other Info, etc.

If some characters weren't reserved you could choose a product reference that would be confused with one of these special fields. E.g. your product O_1234 would be confused with another products (ref 1234) Other Info field.

The ! character is reserved as this indicates that a product reference is a duplicate e.g. 2!1234 is the second duplicate of product 1234. This indicates a certain amount of forward planning by Actinic as this character has been reserved (but unused) for ages and only got put into use with V7's product duplicate feature.

Personally, I'd have been pleased if + and - had been reserved too, as it makes it quite hard to form JavaScript variables out of product references as they can look like arithmetic expressions.

E.g.

<script language=JavaScript>
// save count in a uniquely named variable for this product
var refNETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTREFERENCE = 0;
.
.
</script>

will give a JavaScript error if the ref is e.g. 23-45 but not for 2345

Bet you wished you hadn't asked now

[EaglesNest]

Bet you wished you hadn't asked now

No actually Norm, I real glad that I asked because now I have a good explanation to give to my client other than (da!, I dunno)


Eagle