Product expirations?

[mopower70]

Hello,

I have an interesting situation in which I have products that have a limited lifespan. I would like to accomplish two things: let the customer know what the lifespan of the product is, and give them the option of having a tickler sent when that product is about to expire.

 

If I create "Product Lifespan" as a Product Option, the lifespan shows up as a dropdown list - not at all desireable since it's a hard-coded attribute of the product. I don't want to add it as a category because it makes no sense in this product schema to sort by product lifespan.

 

I'm not happy with my current solution at all. I've added "Product Lifespan" as a Product Option, with months and years as possible values. I then added an attribute to each product of "Product Lifespan", number of months or years, and then to denote that it's a Lifespan attribute, I change the "Value Price" Prefix to an 'L'. I then modified product_info.php so that when a product with $products_options['price_prefix'] == 'L' shows up, I just display the relevant information instead of creating a dropdown list.

 

There's got to be a better way of dealing with this. In addition, some of the products come in multi-packs so the lifespan of a tickler then becomes "Product Lifespan" * num_in_multi-pack. Where would I put that information? Again, it's hard-coded so it shouldn't be a selectable "option."

 

Thoughts? Obvious solutions? Modules that deal with this that I've missed?

[mopower70]

I don't like answering my own posts, but here I go.

 

I fixed this problem by writing a new mod called Static Attributes Basically it allows you to enter product options that the customer can see and that you can program to, but either can't be changed or must be selected by the customer. Things like "Units per Pack", "Product Lifespan", or any other non-modifiable attribute of the product would go here. I've also added functionality for the case in which YOU would like access to that information but the customer may not care; in which case you can set the attribute as "invisible" and it doesn't get printed in the product description.