flagging perishable items for overnight shipping

July 18, 2005

am trying to go live with a cart where the owner threw me a curve ball at the last minute. Is there anything out there that will flag perishable items to only allow overnight shipping and also add $10 for a refrigeration box package?

I don't want to add to the cost of each perishable item since that would add huge shipping costs if a person orders say 10 perishables that would fit in one box.

♥kymation · July 18, 2005

Unmodified osCommerce doesn't allow you to specify shipping by product -- all shipping methods are always available for all products. The only way to assign shipping by product is to use the MVS contribution (see my sig for a link). This will allow you to set a group of products as Perishable, then assign a shipping method to those products. That shipping method can be restricted to overnight (e.g. UPS Next Day Air). You can also add a handling charge to that shipping method to cover the cost of your special box.

Regards

Jim

July 18, 2005

Thanks Jim. On the contribution you say this is in testing mode and shouldn't be put on a production site. I have been tracking this in the forum and am curious about your time frame for having the contribution ready for production site usage.

♥kymation · July 18, 2005

I'd say it is pretty close. I haven't seen any new bug reports in a while. The only hesitation is due to this being a very big mod, so there are a lot of places it can go wrong.

We do have a couple of people using it on production sites right now. I've seen (and used) contributions that have been out for a while that have more bugs than this one. It depends on how comfortable you are at installing and debugging mods to your site.

If you do decide to go ahead with this, take a look at the last page or two of the development thread -- there are a couple of minor patches that haven't made it into the distribution package yet.

Regards

Jim

July 18, 2005

I'm pretty comfortable with this (I think)... I have done quite a few mods big and small to this site as well as 2 other oscommerce sites. Even though I'm a graphic designer and not a php developer, I have added plenty and bloodied my toes on other mistakes with the code for the past 3 years.

The first thing I will do is back up the entire cart so I can always go back to where I started. Thanks for the reply and I will let you know how it goes... wish me luck!

Regards, Janet

♥kymation · July 18, 2005

It sounds like you have plenty of experience with this sort of thing. If you do happen to find a bug, or if you have any problems installing, please let us know on the development thread. Good luck!

Regards

Jim

July 19, 2005

Jim, Just an update and a report on the state of affairs after I added the mod.

First of all, on the Vendors>Manage Vendors Part of the Admin I get the following after adding the Vendors Shipping files:

Federal Express 0

Flat Rate

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_FLAT_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/flat.php on line 32

0

Per Item

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_ITEM_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/item.php on line 33

0

MultiGeoZone MultiTable 0

Table Rate

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_TABLE_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/table.php on line 33

0

United Parcel Service

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_UPS_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/ups.php on line 62

0

United Parcel Service (XML) 0

United States Postal Service

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_USPS_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/usps.php on line 83

0

Zone Rates

Warning: constant(): Couldn't find constant MODULE_SHIPPING_ZONES_SORT_ORDER_3 in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/zones.php on line 111

0

Vendor Module Directory: /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/catalog/includes/modules/vendors_shipping/

Part 2 of this issue is that in the FedEx shipping mod, there is no way to specify overnight only since it goes to the FedEx server and pulls all the shipping options and there is no place in the admin section to specify overnight only.

THE SECOND ISSUE I SEE:

I set up a Perishable Vendor and was going to move all my perishable products over to that Vendor. When I did this with the first two products, I lost them from the cart even though I tried to go back and tell them to got to the category I originally put them in... They appear in the Product Report for that Vendor, just not in the cart... hmmmmm

I am taking the cart back to the original for now but thought you might like to see the 2 things I noticed trying to work with it.

And, by the way, the WinMerge program is awesome... I have been using TextPad Compare files but this is so much easier... thanks.

Regards,

Janet

♥kymation · July 19, 2005

Your first issue is probably caused by missing this code addition to admin/includes/application_top.php:

 //MVS
// set the vendor shipping constants
$vendor_configuration_query = tep_db_query('select configuration_key as cfgKey, configuration_value as cfgValue from ' . TABLE_VENDOR_CONFIGURATION);
while ($vendor_configuration = tep_db_fetch_array($vendor_configuration_query)) {
  define($vendor_configuration['cfgKey'], $vendor_configuration['cfgValue']);
}
//MVS End

Also, check that Admin > Configuration > Shipping/Packaging > Use Vendor Shipping is set to true. If you need to go back to the normal osCommerce shipping, setting this to false should do just that.

Restricting the options in the FedEx module would require a modification similar to the UPS Choice contribution. I'm surprised somebody hasn't done this already. It shouldn't be too hard to add the logic in.

I don't quite understand your second issue. If you changed the vendor of a product while you had an order open you would get all kinds of problems. The data is passed to the cart when the items are first added, so any changes after this will not be properly reflected in the cart. If I'm misunderstanding the problem please give some more information.

Regards

Jim

July 19, 2005

Restricting the options in the FedEx module would require a modification similar to the UPS Choice contribution. I'm surprised somebody hasn't done this already. It shouldn't be too hard to add the logic in.

I don't quite understand your second issue. If you changed the vendor of a product while you had an order open you would get all kinds of problems. The data is passed to the cart when the items are first added, so any changes after this will not be properly reflected in the cart. If I'm misunderstanding the problem please give some more information.

Regards

Jim

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the code I missed, I do have the option set to True.... wish someone would do the Fedex mod like the UPS as my store owner likes Fed Ex...

On the second issue, I changed an existing product to the new vendor and that is when it disappeared. I have over 100 cheeses and around 50 meats and would like to just assign them to the new Perishable vendor and not have to add them all in new. They disappear from the categories when I add the Vendor and don't show up in the public cart at all.

♥kymation · July 19, 2005

It sounds like you missed a mod or two somewhere on the catalog side. I've never seen this particular problem before so I can't say exactly where. Do you get any error messages?

If you'd like to see what it's supposed to look like, my test site for MVS is here. I have assigned products to three vendors, and a couple of those have multiple ship methods. Everything seems to work just fine.

Regards

Jim

July 20, 2005

You mentioned a few items of code that haven't made it into the download. other than the one you sent to me in your reply, are there others that arent in mvs_0.9RC4?

I got everything to work now I think...I am just tweaking what it all says to customize for my store. Once I get it all running, you can go look at www.cooksfreshmarket.com/catalog......

Thanks for your help

Janet

♥kymation · July 20, 2005

There was an odd bug that would allow a customer to check out without choosing a shipping method (or paying for it) under certain conditions There was another that didn't update the email sent to vendors, but that shouldn't concern you. The fix for both is in the development thread here.

Regards

Jim

July 20, 2005

One more question.... what would I need to do to simply add the vendor shipping to the other items in the cart. They will all be shipped from the same location and I just need to add the perishables to the total cart. Of course, I will plaster the warning all over the cart that if you are ordering perishable items, it would be wise to place 2 orders if you don't want to pay for overnight shipping on everything ordered...

Sorry, I thought I was good to go, guess not!

Regards,

Janet

♥kymation · July 20, 2005

I don't see an easy way to do that. You could disable the other shipping module if there are perishables in the cart, but that would take a lot of work.

As a customer, I would be upset if I were required to remove items from the cart and make a second order just to get what I want. I think that you will lose sales doing it that way. I would just allow the customer to mix items as they please, and ship two packages if that's what is necessary. That is what most customers should expect.

Regards

Jim

flagging perishable items for overnight shipping

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