Post-Order Processing

[Rajaat]

I want to run my own online store and osCommerce looks like the perfect tool! Unfortunately, my knowledge in running a business is practically non-existant. I'm curious what is produced by osCommerce when a purchase order occurs. I think I will want to take the output of osCommerce and process it after the order is complete and I was also curious how easy it would be to add a module to do this type of processing. Thanks for the help!

[Guest]

first off, read the documentation, on installation, customization, etc., as it does take a bit of time to make it do and look like you want it to. then search the contributions area for items you may want to install. i do not know what you mean by 'purchase order', is that for what the customer is doing with you or what you will be doing with the order from the customer?

[Rajaat]

So, I'm assuming that a customer browses my catalog and adds a few items to the shopping cart. Eventually the customer checks out and goes through the process for shipping, billing, etc. At the very end of the process the customer gets some confirmation of her purchase in some sort of web-page invoice (perhaps even an email confirmation if that info was retrieved). At this point I expect that the order is "saved" or otherwise stored so that I can complete the order, ship it, etc. I want to take the equivalent of that stored invoice and process it (extract particular information, perhaps even access the database again and look for other information...) and maybe generate a report or something... Anyway, since the information I will be generating will be specific to my catalog schema I expect I'll need to write the code myself which is fine.... as long as I can have it execute automatically by osCommerce. Does that clarify the question a little better?

 

As to reading the installation documentation, I had a hard time finding that online. I expect I either didn't look in the right spot, or I need to download osCommerce and find it in the distribution package... Could you point me to where I would find that?