Customizable products

[Tymitton]

I'm interested in creating a site using osCommerce, it looks like a fantastic tool! I've been looking around at sites that have been developed using osCommerce and haven't seen anything with user-customizable products.

 

I realize osCommerce is fully customizable and can be changed to do anything... but is anyone aware of what it takes to have osCommerce be customized to do something like:

 

1st the customer selects a style of shirt (checks to make sure that style is in stock)

2nd the customer picks a color for the shirt (checks to make sure that color is in stock)

3rd the customer picks a size for the shirt (checks to make sure that size is in stock)

4th the customer adds the shirt to their cart

5th the customer can then create another shirt or check out

 

I've looked around the knowledge base and forums and haven't seen anything that resembles this type of use of osCommerce. Can it be done? How much customization required? I'd like to see some examples if anyone knows of any.

 

Thanks!!!

 

Ty

[Tymitton]

Still searching... anyone know of any osCommerce sites that do this? (where you can customize a product... modifying attributes like color, shape, size)

[Guest]

you need a mutliform wizard type of thing. Create a common file that will handle all steps and each step will generate a separate form. Would be like you have in the admin the categories.php. See how it's structured. First you have a list of products (or categories) then you have the edit product, then you have the preview and finally the update. So you have an action switch that goes through the various steps.

 

The values entered on each form page should be passed to the next. The final page would do the dbase updates ie adding the item to the shopping cart. You also need to set some sort of form navigation see as an example the checkout process how you can go back to the previous checkout pages but you cannot go forward unless you complete a section.

[Tymitton]

Thanks! I've been looking at QT Pro, it looks like it might help somewhat... do you know of any sites that do this... I'd like to see how others have tackled this challenge.

[Guest]

The simplest way is to setup a framework compatible with the osc for the form processing. Compatible meaning you use the tep_xxx functions.

 

I would go with basic form layout script. Setting up the steps first and then gradually add each page specific fields.

 

There are plenty of examples around but of course they're customized. Look in the osc contributions and also samples from sourceforge may help. For instance see how this code is structured:

 

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=45605