Using submit buttons in the shopping cart

[simonc]

In the quest for an accessible Actinic site I've discovered why most have the default image buttons in the shopping cart: hacking around with perl scripts. Ugh. Anyway here's how to change them to input submits.

Go to the design library and edit all the shopping cart buttons to input type="submit". The alt attribute becomes value.
Open your site's CartManager.pl and locate the following code

	if(!defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION"})
		{
		if(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_UPDATE.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sUpdateCartLabel;
			}
		elsif(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_SAVE.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sSaveShoppingListLabel;
			}
		elsif(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_GET.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sGetShoppingListLabel;
			}
		elsif(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_BUYNOW.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sCheckoutNowLabel;
			}			
		elsif(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_CONTINUE.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sContinueShoppingLabel;
			}				
		elsif(defined $::g_InputHash{"ACTION_SEND.x"})
			{
			$::g_InputHash{"ACTION"} = $::g_sSendCouponLabel;
			}			
		}
	}

Remove the .x from each string.
Upload.

Now you can style your buttons more or less sitewide properly with CSS, and they'll scale when users choose a different font size. If you want image buttons back, use CSS to do it.

Disclaimer: I'm a perl and cgi noob. This technique is probably fundamentally flawed, but I think it fits with the whole Actinic ethos

[AndrewHolt]

Thank you for your post simonc, this confirmed why my changes weren't working! Looking into this further, and not wishing to alter the perl files, I found that by changing the name of the submit buttons to include .x at the end of the name also worked. This validated with the w3 validator under xhtml as I was concerned about having a period in the element name.

[NormanRouxel]

Andrew - your solution is neat and simple and you won't have to remember to re-patch the Perl whenever you update Actinic.

Don't worry about the periods in the name attribute. Actinic allows you to use periods in your product references -and these references are used when generating the site's assorted form field names.

[dandelion]

Can anyone confirm whether this is still relevant to v11.0.2?

I have changed the buttons to submits, and the alts to values and removed the src attribute, for each button (including the disabled alternatives, which I guess the Perl script uses when it needs to).

This seems to work on its own now, unless I'm missing something. So I haven't renamed the submit buttons to add ".x". Has the Perl handling changed, or ought I still add the ".x"?

---update
Hmm, the Update, Save and Retrieve functionality works, but the Continue Shopping, and Checkout Now buttons result in getting stuck on cm000001.pl

--update
Yes indeed, the ".x" is required for continue and checkout. I'll stop talking to myself in public now

[DaveSMR]

Keep talking to yourself I say, you answered my question!