[ic] Building a new catalog system -- is it this complex?

[John1]

On Thursday, June 10, 2004 2:49 PM, jeme at rkdpp.com wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:25:42 -0400
> Mike Heins <mike at perusion.com> wrote:
>> Quoting Jeme (jeme at rkdpp.com):
>>> Let's say we sell workbenches. We have 4 styles of bench in 4
>>> colors. Each table comes with a cover in one of 30 colors
>>> (customer's choice). They each come with a choice of 2 types of
>>> rolling casters in one of the four bench colors (they don't have to
>>> match the bench), except one model which comes with rubber feet, but
>>> can be given casters for an upcharge. That's several hundred
>>> variations. Do I have to create each product in my products table
>>> first? Our old system is on paper and we just check the boxes for
>>> all the features and colors. There really aren't separate SKUs for
>>> each entity.
>>
>> This is exactly what Simple options are for. You can have as many
>> as you like for one SKU.
>
> OK, so far, so good... But that's not very far and not very good.
>
> Using an empty foundation store, I've started modifying things to make
> something that just starts to work.
>
> I've added some of the simple products, but when it comes to things
> that need options, I'm hitting a wall.
>
> Using the admin interface, I select a product with SKU "AC001" that
> I'd just created.  This product can vary two simple ways: length and
> weight, so I select the "options" tab.  There are radio buttons for
> the type of option, so I select "Simple" and hit "update".  The
> screen appears to refresh, but nothing changes.  If I try to do it
> again, I get a message that says, "table options: set_slice error as
> called by Vend::Interpolate: DBD::Pg::st execute failed: ERROR:
> parser: parse error at or near "WHERE" at
> /usr/lib/interchange/Vend/Table/DBI.pm line 1245. query was:update
> options SET WHERE code = 'AC001' values were:''"
>
> Inspecting the "options" table in the database, I see that there is a
> single record with a single value in the "code" field set to "AC001".
>
> Does that seem wrong?
>
> This is Debian stable using the packages retrieved using the
> icdevgroup.org apt source (which are at 5.0.1 and that seems a bit
> odd).
>
> Any help appreciated.
>
> Oh, and the documentation wiki that should be at <URL:
> http://www.icdevgroup.org/i/doc/ > is unavailable.  I get the
> interchange server is not available message.
>
Personally, I would suggest following the simple options example in the RTFM
site faq docs.

Edit the database files (i.e. the txt files) in a notepad rather than use
the admin GUI.  If you are using PostgreSQL the database will be updated
from the txt files if you delete the .sql file of the same name in the same
directory, and restart interchange.

Once you get it working this way then go back to the admin GUI and see what
the options you have set up look like from the GUI.

If you look at the foundation demo you will see that items like the
paintbush use options for different bristle types, or a bespoke logo on the
handle :-)