ACTINIC_CATALOG cookie and determining cart behaviour

[collectandplay]

Ok,
I'm trying to implement a bulk ordering one click solution where a user types in X product names and they are added to the users shopping cart even thought they are in different sections on the site.

What I have is a DB that contains product information only (Price, SectionID, Product code, title).

Now as far as I can tell the ACTINIC_CATALOG cookie contains a unique string that is used to identify the XML files .session and .save

What I need to determine is how these two work together. Anybody looked into this or can give me a link showing me how this is done?

[Toby B]

What I need to determine is how these two work together.

Can you be a bit more specific?

On the server there are session files and there are saved cart files (if save/retrieve cart is enabled). These files store information relating to the buyer's last order and will be deleted from the server the first time
any one runs a script after the expiry period defined in Web | Configure Expiry Periods. Basically, every time a buyer uses view cart, search, checkout, login, add-to-cart or referrer, the script will search for expired session files and saved cart files and delete them. Note if nobody visits the site for 10 years these files would remain for 10 years.

On the PC we store 2 types of Cookies:-

o session cookies which are stored in the browser and discarded when the browser is closed.
o cookies which are stored on the PC hard drive by the browser until the expiry date is reached.

We save the contact details in a Cookie with an expiry date set to 2 years from the date it is created if the buyer selects 'Remember Me'.

We save the Cart totals in a Cookie with an expiry date based on the settings from Web | Configure Expiry Periods.

[collectandplay]

Ok,
I'll describe what I am trying to achieve. My site focuses on a card game called Magic the Gathering. People build a 60 card deck from over 5000 available cards.

Currently a buyer has to go into each section and add the cards available in that section.

I want to be able to put a process in place where the user pastes his 'decklist' into a text area i.e.:
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Great Furnace
3 Glimmervoid
4 Somber Hoverguard
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Frogmite
4 Ornithopter
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple of the Vault

I then use ColdFusion to go into a database where I determine the individual productids and the section ids and 'add them' to the shopping cart. Then relocate them to view the cart where they can ammend/delete cart entries. Most people have some of the cards already.

There would be a 2 step process to this where the scripts would determine if all the entered product names are correct and ask them if they meant 'blah' instead.

Adam

[NormanRouxel]

I'd recommend making a single section of type Quantity on Product Page and with the Single Add to Cart option.

Put all your products (or duplicates) in there and have a look at what happens when you add some of these to the cart and the form is submitted.

You should then be able to either cook up some code that either simulates the posted data or populates the form fields and submits said form.

Norman

[collectandplay]

I'm not putting 5000 products into one section. The products are nicely organised at the moment and I'm sooooo not going there Plus it would probably blow the 10,000 product limit.


Have a look, but realistically there has to be a way for me to augment the cart with the items I want to add. Remember I will know the section id and the product code for each item I want to add.

Now based on the .save xml file that implies pretty much all I need to know to add to the cart.

Adam

[NormanRouxel]

Ooops I didn't notice the 5000 item bit.

I think you'd have to customise ShoppingCart.pl to do this. There's an AddMultipleItems routine. You'd have to alter this to deal with several sections.

Norman

[collectandplay]

Ok,
Looks like the cart is contained within the session scope. Which means it's almost impossible for me to get at

I think I may have to approach this from a different angle. Maybe the use of a popup window into which I write a load of html using javascript to write a form that contains each item and post it as an add cart function.

Should be interesting. What I don't want to do is hack a COTS product.

Ah joy

When I get it working I'll come back to you lot with an example.