I understand how to programmatically create a product and also add to cart. I know this might sound dumb but is it is possible to generate a product on the fly and add that to the cart/quote but never actually save it in the database.
We want to create a made to order interface and I was thinking at the end it could add a bundle product with all the selections but that bundle product wouldn't actually exist in the backend.
I figured as long as you can make sure the quote and order has what it needs in terms of the product it would be ok, but obviously there is probably a lot that is tied to looking up stuff in the db on a specific sku or ID. I know that if you delete a product and then look at an order in the admin that causes issues, at least it did for this one scenario I was dealing with.
I was thinking of creating a giant bundle product that had like 6 different bundle items and each item could potentially have like 500 products and then based on what the user selects I programmatically add the bundle to cart. But then I wasn't sure if there would be a negative affect with having a gigantic bundle product like that as well.
UPDATE:
I don't think this will work, obviously there are a lot of information tied to the product in the database and we setup a test and right away we get an error for $item->getProduct(). We are moving forward with creating a giant bundle product and also the generic product with adding custom options on the fly, which Anda pointed out below. Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I'm not sure that clockworkgeek's approach is going to work. On every page load, Magento loads the items from the cart to make sure that they are still valid (in-stock, prices correct, etc), and amends the cart to reflect those values. My understanding of the system in the past has been that a product in the cart needs to have a corresponding database value to survive this process.
The "giant bundle product" approach is a pain, but in the past has been the best approach I have found. Attempting to change the values of the product (such as price or attributes) will be overridden by the cart checks, so you need a product w/ maximal flexibility, such as an overly-customized bundle product or configurable product.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joe
Why not create a generic product in db and then set the product customization as custom options (additional_options) on the fly depending on the user selection. You can add custom options to the product (actually to the quote item) without having to save them in the database. I did this once for a website that sells glasses with prescription. The prescription was added as an option.
You can programmatically create Mage_Sales_Model_Quote_Items and add them to the cart. You've noticed it needs a product to match it's product ID but it needn't be a useful one. It could be a blank, disabled product, also created in code. All that's needed is a stub.
The necessary stuff for the cart is stored in the quote item - fields like name, value and quantity. Those fields are then copied directly to the order without using a product.
Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
creates a new product. you can add it to a cart, by doing something like this:
$cart = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart');
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
->setStoreId($storeid)
->setTypeId($type_id)
->setQty($quantyty)
->setWhatAttributYouWant($attribute);
$cart->addProduct($product);
product attributes you can find in the DB in tables that start like catalog_product_... or take an already created product, and see what attributes it has in the _data array (with debugger or just print_r($product->getData))
Related
I would like know
Suppose, A order consist of three product. When i submit this product to warehouse it ship the prodduct in different shipping method.
I would like to know how can i add these tracking number in magento either programmatic php or directly using mysql query
Thank you.
You can do this without having to run any code (i.e PHP or MySQL), simply partially invoice the order by navigating to the order itself, choosing the invoice tab & checking / unchecking the appropriate products. Then, when you choose to create a shipment, you can base it off of an invoice number and assign appropriate tracking information to it.
I have some configurable products that have many associated simple products, each with many custom options. The configurables use three attributes. My client has now decided that they want to remove one of the attributes. I have used the SQL method to remove one of the attributes, but this is now affecting the custom options when the remaining attributes are selected. The custom options no longer show up. I am assuming this because the attribute is still part of the associated simple products.
Is there a way to remove the attribute from the associated simple products as well, so that the custom options will show correctly when the remaining attributes are chosen?
The attribute, which you are trying to remove is part of each configurable super product, not associated products, as far as I know. Check 'catalog_product_super_attribute' table in db, remove all rows, which have 'attribute_id' set to id, which you want to remove.
Clean the cache, reindex and see, if it works.
To remove one super product attribute from all configurable products, you could execute this SQL query in the database:
DELETE FROM catalog_product_super_attribute WHERE attribute_id = <id>;
The table catalog_product_super_attribute links products to super product attributes.
I've never set a store up to use Price Alerts before, and now that I've gone through and gotten it to work, it appears as though the alert is only triggered when a product's 'Price' attribute changes.
This is nice, but what about tiered pricing? Looking through the ProductAlert core module, I am not sure where this attribute is being filtered.
I'm guessing that an additional model, say 'productalert/tierprice' will need to be created, followed by a new method in Observer.php, likely _processTierprice(). Just not sure if this concept is correct... could use a little guidance.
Thanks!
This shouldn't be too difficult; lots of options (it's Magento, after all)!
I'd add new methods to deal with tier price alerts. For products with tier pricing, you'd need to capture the relevant tier data along with the final price (either in a new table or in new columns on the existing product alert table). The alerts are sent out via scheduled job. So, in a nutshell (overrides where necessary):
Alter the product alert schema as necessary, and amend the frontend form fields to suit
In the overridden Mage_ProductAlert_AddController add a tierPriceAction() method to process the alert subscription, or adjust its existing priceAction() to handle the data being posted in / tier condition
Override Mage_ProductAlert_Model_Observer as needed; I'd include a _processesTierPrice method() similar to _processPrice().
Add a resource model method to get the tier-related prices
Add a tier price email block and template (reference Mage_ProductAlert_Block_Email_Abstract)
Profit!
As a reference for your price logic, see Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Type_Price.
Involved classes : Mage_Sales_Model_Quote_Item and Mage_Catalog_Model_Product.
I get both of them as a result of listening an event ( on cart add ). I am trying to update the quantity information for a product from an external source.
So far I based my code only on the product information and I am not sure if this is correct.
What is the purpose of Quote Items?
How about an bundled of configurable product? Do you have any recommendation on how to get the individual items from a bundle product?
Thanks
I want to thank both responders so far for their effort but their responses are pretty far from my question. I'll try to respond myself based on the things that I've learned.
A quote is a concept related to the order, only that is previous to that in terms of work flow in Magento. A real world concept is something like a preorder, like a postIt on which you place your asked dishes in a restaurant without being an order or a bill.
I was monitoring an event (checkout_cart_product_add_after) that is sending me the $product and the $orderItem. I understand now that is sending both in order to get information about the product and information about billing and the representation of that product in the future order.
In the case of the grouped products for example where the $product is Tshirt with various associated sizes, the $product will contain the SKU of the main grouped product and the $orderItem will contain the instance of the Tshirt that was selected ( medium size SKU ).
FYI: So in order to update the information of a product at cart update you have is better to get the product info from the $item if is a complex type ( bundle, configurable or grouped )
Magento drops quote items into the cart, specifically. Those quote items are retrieved by using $product->prepareForCart. These items also include different information, such as quantity and configurable product options (on a quote item).
From a backend perspective, data for products are stored in: catalog_product_entity_*, whereas quote items are stored in sales_flat_quote_item (at least in Enterprise. someone else might want to verify this on community).
EDIT: Attaching some code that we wrote to import product inventories a while back.
$product = Mage::getModel("catalog/product")->load($productId);
$product->seStockData(array(
"qty" => (int)$yourQuantity,
"is_in_stock" => ((int)$isTheProductInStock),
"manage_stock" => $manageStock,
"is_qty_decimal" => $isQtyDecimal,
"use_config_manage_stock" => $useConfigManageStock,
));
Mage::getModel('catalog/product_api')->update($sku,$product->getData());
For your purposes you may just need to call $product->save();, but I'm including the whole snippet as written because it works.
Hope that helps. Thanks,
Joe
My first answer would be that a product and a quote for a product are two separate entities and therefore should not be modelled in a unified entity.
An example of why would be from the company I work for, and why we model these things separately:
In our e-procurement system you might have a "contract" between a specific buyer and a seller. The "quote" item models this when it comes to invoice entries. If there isn't a contract use the normal product price to create a Quote Item else adjust the price using the "contract" between supplier and buyer.
I have a customer who retails third party batteries, and some batteries can replace several OEM models.
For instance, 3rd party SKU 12345 may replace Toshiba N23 and HP 53214, thus my customer would like to create two products with the same SKU in front end (they are essentially the same product). However, Magento by default does not allow duplicated SKU.
My current solution is to set SKU to not required from the backend, and add another attribute called Model that allows duplicated values, and display the Model in front end.
Is there a better way to do this? Or is it possible to allow duplicated SKU?
Tian Bo
Noble Technologies
It sounds to me like you've found a good solution. I'm not so sure you should try to have duplicate values for SKU for two reasons.
First the whole point of SKU is that it is a unique identifier. That's its only reason for existing. If you're going to have duplicate values, then it's not a unique identifier; it's just another attribute. But of course Magento still needs a unique identifier to work, which means that this is an extra field, which takes us exactly where you are now.
That said we come to my second point which is this... I'm not exactly a Magento guru, but I've built my share of e-commerce sites and one thing I've learned is that they depend on certain unbreakable rules to work properly. One of them is that unique identifiers are unique, both on the database and application level. As such, a large part of the website depends on this to function correctly. Which I'm pretty sure goes for Magento too.
So trying to change such a basic premise in something so complicated will only lead to horrors and a slow descent into madness.
This sounds like a good solution that I extended a bit further, however what I did with multiple store was to create a visible attribute ITEM_SKU (Item SKU) - make it visible and searchable and then concatenate the store_id to Magneto SKU to make it unique.
So SKU becomes (Store_id "-" SKU).
It surprises me how often people are willing to break who-knows-what parts of Magento, just to get a specific piece working how they expect.
The proper way to allow for duplicate skus is NOT to (unless you'd like to re-write large parts of the framework). You CAN, however, add a custom attribute to products that shares all the same settings as "sku" minus the setting that requires values to be unique.
Changing product pages, emails, etc to show this value instead will require a little extra work but will save you headaches later.
Why don't you create 1 product (SKU 12345) and list this product in multiple categories. So your multiple categories will be Toshiba and HP. The same product (SKU 12345) will be listed in Toshiba and HP.