[ic] Stock-Alert Function

[Dan Browning]

> On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, joachim.richter wrote:
>
> j>>when and how does interchange send the email to the
> costumer who does the stock-alert thing ?
> j>>
> j>>Put name/email in the stock alert page of article which is
> not in stock.
> j>>Then I changed the inventory form 0 to 100, but do not
> receive the requested mail.
> j>>I do receive the mail though, telling me "This a
> confirmation of your request submission. bla bla bla"
> j>>stating my details and the article. i am using interchange 4.8
>
> I suspect that this is one of those 'features' that has been
> left for the
> user to add stuff in to make it work. Kind of like the 'mailing list'
> questions/options.
>
> In IC 4.6, you can set your inventory at 10, but a customer
> can still order
> 50. The inventory-related functions seem to just dangle
> there. I have set
> all of my quantities to 100000, unless I have temporarily run out of
> something - which is rare.
>
> I'm doing all of my inventory stuff with my Point Of Sale software.
>
> -= Jim =-

Jim is right, AFAIK.  I have attached an old e-mail I saved from Bill Randle
that implemented In-Stock notifications using some cron glue.  HTH,

-Dan Browning

From: "Bill Randle" <billr@exgate.tek.com>
To: <interchange-users@lists.akopia.com>
Subject: Re: [ic] In Stock Notification
Date: Thursday, January 04, 2001 10:33 AM

Doug, et. al.,

I finally got time to follow up on my previous cron suggestion with
some more details.

This method has three pieces, although the second and third could be
combined into a single page.

(1) a crontab entry for the 'interchange' user that runs periodically
    (pick your time interval). For example, to run once a day at 4pm:
	16 * * * * /usr/bin/GET \
		http://mysite.com/cgi-bin/myshop/cron/pending >> \
		/tmp/pending_log

(2) create a file "pending.html" and put in an accessable location
    (in this case, a "cron" directory underneath the "pages" dir).
    This file is just a wrapper for including the file that does the
    "real" work. If you want multiple checks or updates to happen,
    you can add additional [include] tags for them. For example:
	>>>> pending.html <<<<
	[include cron/check_pending]

(3) create the "check_pending" script, which lives in a different "cron"
    directory, this one at the same level as the "pages" dir. I.e.:
		interchange
		     |
		-----|--------- ...
		|	   |
	       cron       pages
			    |
			------------ ...
			|	|
		      cron    special

    You can use pretty much any directory structure you want - this just
    happens to be what I have.

    In "check_pending" you might have something like this:

[tag export inventory][/tag]
[tag export pending][/tag]
[mvasp tables="inventory pending"]
<%
	no strict;
	$Document->hot(1);
	$CGI::cookie = 'CRON';
	$Scratch->{mv_no_session_id} = $Scratch->{mv_no_count} = 1;
	HTML("\nEntering pending/inventory update");
	# open 'pending' db and grab entries for users that haven't been
	# notified their requested item is now in stock
	my $dbh = $Sql{pending};
	my $sth = $dbh->prepare(q{ SELECT * FROM pending WHERE notified = '0'})
	    or return error_message("can't open pending database");
	my $rc = $sth->execute()
	    or return HTML("\ncan't open pending database");
	my $hash;
	while($hash = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()) {
		# $hash has all column values:
		#     code username email initial_date notify_date skus
notified
		# "skus" is an array of out of stock items

		# foreach sku, check the current inventory quantity and if > 0,
		# send the user email (email address could from the 'pending'
db,
		# or be looked up in the 'userdb', given the username).

		# if any notification emails were sent for this user then:
		#  (1) update the "notified" and "notify_date" fields of
		#      the 'pending' db.
		#  (2) if this user still has outstanding requests, then
		#      (a) either update the "skus" field of the existing
		#	   record, deleting the items that are now in stock, or
		#      (b) close the existing record and create a new record
		#	   with those item numbers still out of stock
	}
%>
[/mvasp]

Flushing out the "check_pending" script is left as an exercise to the
implementor. :-)

Finally, get and install 'GET', if you don't already have it. 'GET' is part
of the Perl LWP library.

As a final note, I'm sure there are other variations or implementations
possible. This is just an outline to get you going. Also note that this
is being used with minivend 4.04. It should be completely portable to
Interchange, but won't work with minivend 3.x without some changes.

	-Bill


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