Re: [mv] Saved Cart Question?

[OTR Comm <otrcomm@isp-systems.com>]

cfm@maine.com wrote:
> 

> 
> Is that any different from an item disappearing from the store
> during a session?  Do you have some sort of extra long session life
> tied in with prepayments or some such?

Yeah, I have benn working on a 'patch' minivend 3.14 that lets me have a
unique item (like a painting) in a gallery.

When the first person puts the unique item in their cart, anyone else
who comes to the page with this item will see a 'Sale Pending' notice
for the item and no one else can put it into their cart until a few
options happen.

If the prson with the item completes the purchase, then the 'Sale
Pending' notice changes to 'Sold' and that is that, no one else can
purchase the item anyway.

If the person with the item in their cart removes it from their cart,
the item is then available for some one else to purchase.

Now, what I have to do is cover the cases where the person with the item
in their cart leaves their session going, but does not exit the store or
remove the item from their cart and/or the case where someone saves
their cart.

The first case I take care of with a perl script that runs every five
minutes and checks the expiration date of the cart (I added cart_created
and expire_date fields in the products record).  I will let someone keep
an item in their cart for 24 hours, so if the date and time that the
perl script checks the products database and finds an item with status
'Sale Pending' that has an expire_date older that 24 hours, the script
resets the status for that item to 'Available'.

Now, the case where someone saves their cart means that I have to remove
the unique item from their 'saved' cart after 24 hours.  To do this I
have to be able to modify the userdb.gdbm file.

I can do all this when I have all my database setup in MySQL and
Postgres, but some people may not want to use these databases.  When I
get the 'patch' completed, I am going to make it available to the
minivens-users list, but I just wanted to have the gdbm system working
first.

Another this that I can to is take a non-refundable deposit on a credit
card to hold an item for, say a week or 10 days.  The cron system runs
perl scripts that monitor the status of these special items and when/if
the deposit hold time is two days away from expiration, the scripts will
e-mail the customer reminding them that they only have 2 days left
before they forfeit their deposit.  Obvoiusly, this would only happen if
they had not completed the purchase.

I do all my own direct credit card interfacing to Cybercash and First
Data Corp, so I can process a deposit before I put the item in their
cart and put the 'Sale Pending' notice up.

Murrah Boswell

> 
> I just tried that and the item simply disappears from the cart but
> with a qty 1 and price of zero.  We've got some custom cart code so
> that might or might not be same for you.
> 
> Seems to me a little perl routine on the cart/checkout pages
> could handle that nicely.  Or is there some specific reason you need
> to remove it from the gdbm file itself, whether the visitor returns
> or not?
> 
> cfm
> 
> >
> > Does anyone know how this can be done?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Murrah Boswell
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Minivend-users@minivend.com
> > http://www.minivend.com/mailman/listinfo/minivend-users
> 
> --
> 
> Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
> MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
> 1.207.657.5078                                       http://www.maine.com/
> Content management, electronic commerce, internet integration, Debian linux
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Minivend-users mailing list
> Minivend-users@minivend.com
> http://www.minivend.com/mailman/listinfo/minivend-users

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