Magento configure a product while comparing - php

I'd like to add some functionality to the comparing feature Magento offers. When comparing products, users are presented with an 'Add to cart' button. This feature only works well for simple products. When pressing the add to cart button on a configurable or bundled product the user is redirected to the product detail, out of the compare view.
Would it not be much better when a user could configure the products inside the compare view?!
Do you guys know of a magento plugin that does this trick? Or have ideas how this feature could be implemented in the existing source?

This is something that comes up from time to time as I develop Magento sites. The gist of the problem is this: the logic for dealing with configurable/bundle/etc products is not simple. The JS code that was written to handle this convoluted logic is written is such a way that multiple products on the same page cannot be accomodated.
So, to do what you want, the first thing to do is to simplify your products down significantly. The brunt of the complexity is dealing with multiple configurable attributes and changing pricing, etc. After that, you'll need to rewrite the configurable product JS to set up the submit form properly. Once you get the right data submitted, you should be pretty safe.
Hope that gives you a hint!
Thanks,
Joe

Related

How do I create multiple checkout pages for WooCommerce?

Is it possible to create multiple checkout pages for WooCommerce?
The reason is that I want to customize many things on the checkout pages (eg. graphics, text, offers and popups) depending on the products that a user chooses.
While I can do these all on a single page, it would be a lot easier to organize them in separate pages.
What I have tried
I tried the various solutions listed here but none of them worked:
Woocommerce Multiple Checkout Pages
Thanks.
From what I understand you are trying to create multiple checkout pages templates in order to use them depending on certain conditions.
At first glance you could try overriding the WooCommerce templates.
Please note that the consensus is to avoid having an overly complex checkout process, as a poorly designed checkout user experience will negatively affect the conversion rate.
If you provide more details about the conditions you are trying to work with it might make it easier to help you find a solution.

Magento Multi-Step Product Configuration

I'm currently attempting to extend the inherent Magento product view to divide the custom options belonging to a configurable product into sections loaded by ajax. The end goal is to create a step by step process guiding the user through each step of the product configuration process before they would add the product to the cart.
Advanced Custom Product Options
We are also utilizing Mageworx's Advanced Custom Product Options to allow for the larger customization of products.
Simple Products Linked to Configurable
Our current environment is set up to handle simple products as configurators for their parent configurable product. When a user navigates to the simple product, they are directed to the configurable product with the option represented by the simple product pre-selected.
End Goal
The hopeful endpoint would be that once a user clicks on a simple product, they would be redirected to the configurable product with a single pre-selected option depending on the simple product. The user would then be able to customize their order, or jump directly to adding it to the cart as is. The customization process would re-evaluate at each step to determine if there is a concurrent step, for example, if the user were to select to add trim, there would be an additional step to customize that trim, whereas if they opted out, the step would be skipped.
The idea is simply a product configurator within the Magento framework, something similar, in function, as to what appears below. The checkout steps being Style, Color, and Size, each which have their own page.
The Overarching Question
I am fairly new to the development of Magento, and am wondering what the best method of attacking this problem is. I have thought of using an observer to hook into before add to cart, but I am unsure it would allow me to refresh the blocks and load in new data. My other idea was to tap into view.phtml and set up some ajax loading within the page itself, but that seemed a bit 'hacky'.
I have spent quite a while searching for examples on how some have overcome this problems, but haven't found much outside of some very vague ideas on what could work. If any one has insight onto a solution to my problem, their thoughts would be much appreciated.
Current Approach
So far I've tried creating a Router for a Controller to handle POST requests to change out the Product Option sidebar when a value is changed. It seems a little bit slow, however.

php and interspire grab information from dropshipper

I need to grab information from my dropshipper's site. The only thing I really need to grab is the inventory count. What would be the best technique for doing this with php? Should I use cURL? If so, can you please give me some example code of how to do it?
P.S. I am using interspire shopping cart too
Thanks in advance
It's tough to answer without knowing what your dropshipper allows. Mine gave me a detailed user guide with several ways to get data from their servers (cURL, Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc. all with example code).
The way I handled real time stock levels was to build code from one of their examples and using XML-RPC grab the stock levels from the supplier when a customer navigates to the individual product pages. The response from the supplier's server is just the stock number for that product (based on the SKU). My code then inserts that stock level into the prodcurrentinv field in the database for that particular product. This all happens in a split second before the page loads fully (before the stock level display on the page). I added it as a function in class.product.php.
Because I don't really know PHP, I wasn't able to get this to work with more than one SKU at a time (for use in the shopping cart and on the category product listing pages). I'm hiring a programmer for that.
But it's really important to know what type of interaction your supplier allows and it's hard to answer your question without knowing that.

Problems with simple eCart solution

Right, I am having a nightmare.
We have been using a service called Fat Free Cart (which has so far been rather good) to build our new eCommerce website.
http://www.fatfreecart.com/
http://www.designti.me/testing/flipstick/index.php
And we have come to the point where we are looking to add postage options.
To my knowledge you cant do this with Fat Free Cart (but if you can then any help would be appreciated)
Can anybody else recommend a cart that is as simple to set up and use as FatFreeCart?
I need to be able to just copy in a line of code where I need to put a buy or Cart button and I also need to be able to get a drop down box with different postage options.
It sounds like FatFreeCart is keeping it's promises, but your application needs more features that go beyond it's scope. I like this "spartan" e-shop very much. It is great for promotion of simple items in any site.
What you could do, would be to set up a "real" e-commerce application, since you are PHP oriented, like osCommerce, Magento or VirtuaMart. Virtuemart is an addon for Joomla. All three offer you a full range of features and a full back-office administrator application that will allow you to make offers, define discount periods and pricing according to criteria like number of items ordered etc.
Now, you can keep your nice website and link your products straight to the appropriate items of the eshop instead of adding FatFreeCart links. This way the user will proceed to complete the purchase.
The other option would be join the E-Junkie.com team and extend FatFreeCart to do what
you think is missing. You should be aware to keep it fat free after the add ons.
I just almost bought a Flipstick...

Ubercart add to cart form with quantity option per attribute

I need the add to cart form on each product to display separate quantity fields so items of different attributes can be added at the same time. This is for a photography site, so it makes sense for the customer to order 2 6x4 prints and one 10x8.
Right now the add to cart form is something like this:
Here is a mockup of what I want to have:
I have no idea which hooks to use, or if it's even possible to add multiple product variants in one POST. Is anyone familiar enough with the Ubercart api to tell me how I can go about doing this.
I found this googling for a solution to the same problem. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything.
So I made a patch and sent it in to an issue with a similar request - http://drupal.org/node/782154#comment-3925090
The patch isn't tested very well yet, but I will be going live with it or a subsequent solution in a couple of weeks.
Hope it helps.

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