Attach a filename from the checkout page and carry it through to the back end

[Crusader12]

Hi,
Fairly new to Zencart and loving it so far. I'm working on an apparel site which offers custom design along with their shirts. I'm running version 1.3.9 and the link is prothings.com/store

After purchasing a shirt and selecting the custom design option, an artwork uploader is generated on the Checkout page. I've used javascript to pull the file names of the uploaded files and place them into the correct orders at the end of the unordered list of price attributes.

Everything works correctly (still a few minor bugs), but when proceeding on to the other checkout steps the artwork file names drop off. Is there any way to keep these names intact and carry them through the rest of the checkout process and eventually onto the order in the admin?

Thanks!

[Kim]

Why aren't you using the built in upload attribute?

[Crusader12]

Hi, I'm not using the file upload attribute for a couple of reasons:

1. I require multiple files to be uploaded for each product (an unknown number of files)

2. If artwork/design is chosen, then this becomes a required field (from the forums I've discovered you can't really make this a required field)

For those 2 reasons I've had to integrate the uploader outside of the ZenCart attributes. At this point they are now required for orders that need artwork and provide a way to name files according to the order name as well as make these required before proceeding to the checkout (by simply showing the cart checkout button once artwork is assigned to an order). I've purchased the ZC manual and read it as well as searching both the forums and google and believe this to be the best method for what I need on this site. The ZC file upload field just wasn't cutting it...

[DrByte]

If you set your custom upload code to insert the selected filename and other information that you want added as attributes, then the data will pass thru to the order as attribute data. If you don't, then ... it won't.

[Crusader12]

Sorry, I'm not following you when you say:

"If you set your custom upload code to insert the selected filename and other information that you want added as attributes, then the data will pass thru"

How would I go about doing this?

I cannot use a price attribute for the uploader due to the reasons I listed earlier, so I'm stuck trying to dynamically add the information to the form from the cart checkout page using jquery....
Thanks!

[DrByte]

Well, since you're not using the normal method of linking filenames at the time of add-to-cart, you're going to have to get creative with a way to update the cart contents long after it's already been set, ie: once your uploader tool does its magic. You'll need to study the shopping cart class and see how it stores the information, and work up your own way to inject the additional required entries.

And you'll probably need to create (otherwise unused) attributes for it to link to, else the database relationships won't match and thus the records will be excluded from the joins and thus won't show.

[Crusader12]

Ahhhh, this would be much easier if zc supported multiple file uploads with required fields....

[DrByte]

You could always simply code it to make them required fields, if that's the real goal you have in mind.
And share the code back to the community so others can benefit from it after you.