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  1. #1
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    Default "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    Hi All,

    A non-profit client has asked me about using Zen Cart to implement a "stand-alone" donation page that would work like the donation pages served up by acceptiva.com. Here are some examples:

    Kempe Foundation - https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=287515
    Cancer Support Community - https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=980924
    SBCC Foundation - https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=69e611
    Penland School of Crafts - https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=37be0f

    I've already successfully implemented a "donation product" that a customer can either add to the cart during the normal course of shopping, or at the end, during checkout, along the lines suggested in the following posts:

    http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...n-like-product
    http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...box-to-my-site

    However, this doesn't satisfy the current client's fundamental requirements that:

    1. A donor need neither have nor create an account to make the donation;
    2. The donor's payment information must be entered on the same page as the specification of the donation amount and attributes;
    3. There should be no way for the donor to get access to the cart (e.g., during the confirmation phase) in order to add other products from the store to it. In other words, the donation functionality should appear to stand alone, and not appear to be part of the client's Zen Cart store. The most the prospective donor should be able to do is adjust the donation amount/attributes and the payment information, or cancel out of the transaction altogether.

    I believe that requirement (a) above can be satisfied by the COWOA module (http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1115).

    However, I haven't found any examples of Zen Cart stores that implement (b) or (c), nor references to add-on modules that might help in implementing such behavior. (If there are any such modules, I clearly haven't been creative enough to think of search terms that would shake them out of the forum! )

    So: does anyone have any pointers to add-on modules that might address these additional requirements, or, alternatively, on which templates I would have to customize to get the desired behavior?

    Thanks,

    M

  2. #2
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    You will have to create the form and method to capture the donation if this is required

    But ezpages can accept most all html

    admin > tools > ezpages
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  3. #3
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    Okay, so if I understand correctly, the method that processes the form on the first ezpage would have to create and manage all the server-side resources that represent the transaction-in-progress, such as:

    • create a shoppingCart object
    • call its add_cart() method to put the donation product (with associated attributes) into the cart
    • create/populate the order object
    • create/populate whatever objects COWOA (or alternatively "Fast & Easy Checkout") uses to do its thing
    • etc...

    Presumably I would also need a second ezpage (with its own associated form and method) for presenting the confirmation dialog and commit button, and for processing the payment; and then a final ezpage for displaying the "Thank you" coda. (Right?)

    Assuming that this understanding is at least somewhat close to the mark, have you got any suggestions for me on how to structure the PHP module containing the method code so that it has access to all the needed server side assets, and also for where the resulting PHP module should live in the site's directory hierarchy?

    Probably most helpful, if such a thing exists (and easier than writing a lengthy narrative), would be a pointer to an actual example of an ezpage containing a form for doing something non-trivial, and to the PHP module containing the associated method code.

    Thanks,

    M

  4. #4
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    If I understand the question, I have used Machform (not free, but worth the cost) to create stand-alone forms in EZ pages.

  5. #5
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    But ez-pages cannot handle PHP which you would need for creating opjects etc. You need to use define pages for that - they are PHP files themselves, whereas ez-pages are only database information.

  6. #6
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    Hmm... coding an HTML form into an ezpage doesn't seem to be where the major challenge of this exercise lies.

    I'm much more concerned to know how to structure the back-end PHP code that processes the form -- which I don't think Machform will help me with, unless I've missed something in my quick perusal of the appnitro.com site.

    M

  7. #7
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    Quote Originally Posted by gjh42 View Post
    But ez-pages cannot handle PHP which you would need for creating objects etc. You need to use define pages for that - they are PHP files themselves, whereas ez-pages are only database information.
    Since I haven't played with ezpages at all, and have only done super-trivial things with define pages (certainly no form processing), I'm probably not really qualified to have an opinion on this, but: wouldn't it be possible to code the form on an ezpage, and implement the form-processing logic in a PHP module, which would be invoked via the form's "submit" method?

    This was how I was interpreting Kobra's response to my original post.

    M

  8. #8
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    create a shoppingCart object
    call its add_cart() method to put the donation product (with associated attributes) into the cart
    create/populate the order object
    Why fuss with a shopping cart object??
    Create the form as you posted where they can adjust the donation
    You will have to hook to what ever payment processor you are using to process the payment
    The Thank you can be just a html page with a link back to your shop

    Processors usually have examples of html code to trigger collection

    So no php code should be required

    So no php code required
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  9. #9
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    Quote Originally Posted by kobra View Post
    Why fuss with a shopping cart object??
    Well, I was hoping to capture the donation as a Zen Cart order, just as though it had come from a regular shopping interaction. Two main reasons for this:

    1. I have to capture a number of items of information from the donor, including their name and contact information, employer information if their donation is to be matched by their employer, and honoree information if the donation is being made "in honor of" or "in memory of" someone else. Donor name and contact info would be captured by COWOA or Fast&Easy, and I was planning on representing the employer and honoree information as product attributes, which of course will only work if the donation is a product.
    2. The donation amount needs to be reported to the Finance Dept., just like all other revenue inflows from the store. We already have a mechanism in place for batching store transactions over to the accounting systems, which is a wheel I'd rather not re-invent for this project.

    So, to process the donation as an order (assuming that I don't want to fiddle the store's MySQL tables directly -- which I really don't want to do), at the very least I would need an order object, populated with the correct product and customer information. It seemed that the most convenient way of getting one of those would be to start with the cart object.

    Quote Originally Posted by kobra
    Create the form as you posted where they can adjust the donation
    You will have to hook to what ever payment processor you are using to process the payment
    And that's a third reason I think I need a PHP backend: the client's payment processor is Linkpoint. The only convenient access I have to that is via the store's linkpoint_api module, which offers a single PHP object ("lphp") whose curl_process() method takes an associative array of name/value pairs, does the XML interaction with the Linkpoint gateway, and hands back another associative array of name/value pairs.

    Quote Originally Posted by kobra
    Processors usually have examples of html code to trigger collection
    I'm struggling a bit to understand what you mean by this. Are you talking about HTML form code that would do an HTTP POST to a URL offered by the payment processor?

    I guess that could be an easy option if the payment processor accepts URL-encoded post data, but as noted above, Linkpoint wants XML. The only way I can think of to create the needed XML on the client side would be to rewrite the code of the lphp object's buildXML() method in JavaScript -- which I wouldn't be at all keen on doing.

    (Does Linkpoint have a non-XML gateway interface that I'm not aware of?)

    M

  10. #10
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    Default Re: "Stand Alone" Donation Page?

    There's a FAQ page on setting up a simple donation system. No programming required.

    http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...ct-or-Donation
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