Configurable Products - should it be one item or many items?

General Forums General Questions
#1

I noticed with CS-CART and a couple of other carts that each individual item added to a configurable product is counted individually. For example, if someone purchases a computer and chooses an item for memory, hard drive, case, DVD, when added to the cart, the items in the cart is 4 but the customer is only buying 1 computer composed of many parts.

The same is for a gift basket that is set up as a configurable product. The customer can choose 10 items to put into the basket. The item count is 10, but the person is only buying 1 basket.

In the back-end the merchant sees each individual component. Need for inventory, but the customer is only getting one item.

HP only shows 1 item in cart, even though when you purchase it, you may have to select 10 or more components.

Just wondering what others feel about this.

Thanks.

#2

I agree - if it’s from a configurator purchase, it should just show 1 item in cart.

#3

I need each item to be counted separately. I see you point, but for me I have a main product and then add-ons that are not really part of the main item. I need to see all items in the cart.



Also, I would like the option for my customer to choose more than one item. So, a check box is no good for me. I need a text box where they can choose 1 of a certain add-on and maybe 2 of another add-on and then 5 of another add-on. Right now they can only select 1 of any particular add-on.

#4

Even if counted as one item, all the parts would show individually in the cart and are counted for inventory. I guess I need customization to use it. My customers would be totally confused if they bought one item and it showed up as two or three in the cart. They would probably cancel out thinking their order was duplicated or triplicated.

#5

Has anyone ever found a resolution to this so 1 fully configured computers shows as 1 item in the cart overview but displays all the options when you view the contents of the cart?

#6

Take a look a dell’s configurator, quite similar to cs-carts.



[URL]http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/segments/dhs/odg_special50?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=uk[/URL]



Hit the ( Build It button ) I think CS-Cart’s is better. :shock:

#7

[quote name=‘zardos’]Take a look a dell’s configurator, quite similar to cs-carts.



[URL]http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/segments/dhs/odg_special50?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=uk[/URL]



Hit the ( Build It button ) I think CS-Cart’s is better. :shock:[/QUOTE]



Yes this would be the ideal outcome once you add the item to the cart it only shows 1 item in the cart overview on the top right of the page. It also does not allow you to change quantity on each individual item which is a plus for a computer configurator.

#8

Hello,

The Dell example and other major computer manufactures work the same way, CS-Cart does not. In the Dell example, you select many components to go into the Computer and when added to the cart, it shows the quantity of “1”. In CS-Cart, it would show the Quantity as the count of each of the components. Could be a quantity of “10”, if I used the example I did at the Dell site.

#9

I understand this but I was wondering if anyone has been able to modify the cart so it only shows qty 1 as it could be confusing to an end user to see 10 items in a cart when they only clicked add to cart once.

#10

CS would sort it for a price :rolleyes: as this is a major addon, and HEADACHE :shock:

#11

I put this issue in as a bug last year (Bug #340). CS-CART did not see it as a bug.

Bob

#12

The thing is, it is full of bugs, i just found 2 :shock:

#13

So I may be completely off track (please let me know if I am) but I think if you modify the cart_status.php you may be able to get the status (Cart sidebox) to show the count of products that are configurable by summing all product with a product_type = ‘C’ and the contraints below…


$cart['amount'] = db_get_field("SELECT sum($db_tables[user_session_products].amount)
FROM $db_tables[user_session_products], $db_tables[products]
WHERE $db_tables[user_session_products].user_id = and $db_tables[user_session_products].item_id =$db_tables[products].product_id and $db_tables[products].product_type = 'C';");



The thing I still need is how to get the users user_id from the current session (labeled in the query). If you then assign this count to the $cart[‘amount’} variable which gets passed to smarty as $cart_amount, I think it could work. If anyone knows how to get this current session user_id please let me know.



EDIT; Just realized I also need to account for the possibility of the user adding 2 of the same products that are available so I am using the sum function.