Add user data to cart in Magento 1.6

Question

I read a lot of tutorials all over the Internet, but even those that were on the Magento website are for version 1.5 or less, and even some feature links no longer exist.

What I'm doing is simple, I send the element to a user script outside of Magento, where the user does the design, and then the client can click "Add to Cart" and add it back to Magento.

I need the names of the image files with the design to be the specific data item displayed during the order process and the history of the viewing order for the client and administrator.

I have a module that connects to checkout_cart_product_add_after and can get the following information: designs and designId . designId used if the user comes back to edit the design, so the design will be reloaded, and then when the element is returned, the contents of designs and designId should be replaced if it is different.

I am currently adding the product to the cart at the URL, because examples of how to add it pragmatically worked to a certain extent, but ultimately could not save the cart. I believe the difference between STORE_ID and some random failure in Magento code.

I appreciate pointers to more solid information than just plowing through old documentation to see if there is anything useful to get out of it, it got me so far, but this is not an effective method of working correctly.

Answer 1

There are many things to consider when taking this approach, and there are several ways you can do this. If something is not so simple.

A) First, see if this can be done using existing custom product options. If you can do it in any way without having to change a lot of kernel functionality, it will make your life easier.

B) Personally, I would consider creating a model for your custom content and the relationship between this content and sales/quote_item and sales/order_item . You will need to change the external interface to enable this, as well as the admin area to display information, and give administrators the ability to add custom content to items. This is probably the most thorough way to do this.

C) Alternatively, you can add an array of data to the quote when the item is added to the quote. To do this, you will have to completely grab the additional basket controller. To get started, take all the functions from an existing controller. Look at the function Mage_Sales_Model_Quote :: addProduct (), and you will see that it takes two parameters:

 $quote->addProduct($product, $request); 

where $request is of type Varien_Object , formatted as follows:

 $request = new Varien_Object(array( 'qty'=>$qty, 'options'=>$options, 'custom_options'=>$custom_options )); 

and where $custom_options is an array of user data.

This method may be useful, but fraught with danger. You need to make sure that you duplicate all the functionality of the original controller to add to the cart, including sending an event and setting all the session flags. There are other considerations. If your data has a specific position, we can safely assume that you do not want Magento to simply increase the number of positions in the basket, since specific data refers to a specific position. To do this, you must override Mage_Sales_Model_Quote and duplicate the getItemByProduct() function to run another set of checks in position to determine whether to increase qty.

If you can't do A, B is my recommended approach. This is probably more time for a short-term but better solution in the long run.