Stock by Attribute v4.0 addon for v1.3.5-1.3.9

[kuroi]

I have some products for which I was to keep track of stock by attributes,
and some for which I want to keep track of total stock regardless of attributes.
Is it possible to decide which products should appear in the stock by attributes list?
I have installed the mod and all my products with attributes appear there.
If don't put in numbers for product variants then it treats my total stock as zero.

Do I have to either keep track of the stock of all products via attrabutes or none, or can I mix and match?

The mod displays all products, but only stock by attributes for those products for which you explicitly choose to set attribute stock.

Once you decide to set attribute stock, you must do so for all variants available for that product and any variants not set will be assumed to have no stock. However, you can remove all the variants and revert to managing stock at the product level if you wish.

[trollboy]

The mod displays all products, but only stock by attributes for those products for which you explicitly choose to set attribute stock.

Once you decide to set attribute stock, you must do so for all variants available for that product and any variants not set will be assumed to have no stock. However, you can remove all the variants and revert to managing stock at the product level if you wish.

That is what I thought should happen, but t doesn't seem to be working properly. When I look at the Stock by Attributes admin page, the stock appears at the product level for any products for which I haven't set indivdual stocks by attribute. However, when I try and buy one of these products, the shopping cart tells me that there s not enough stock. If I "synchronise stock" on the Stock by Attributes admin page the stock value gets reset to zero, It seems as though the stock at the product level is not being recognised.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong?

[kuroi]

That is what I thought should happen, but t doesn't seem to be working properly. When I look at the Stock by Attributes admin page, the stock appears at the product level for any products for which I haven't set indivdual stocks by attribute. However, when I try and buy one of these products, the shopping cart tells me that there s not enough stock. If I "synchronise stock" on the Stock by Attributes admin page the stock value gets reset to zero, It seems as though the stock at the product level is not being recognised.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong?

Sorry my earlier response wasn't very well-crafted. I'll try to make it a little more clear, though I fear you won't much like the answer.

The way the mod works is that once you enable stock by attribute it takes over the management of stock levels for all products with attributes. So if you have a product with attributes for which you do not create any variants and give them stock, then when a customer tries to buy them, the mod will return zero stock levels. This is not immediately obvious as the product stock level is not updated when the mod is first installed, but when you sync the stock, the product stock will go to zero. Products that have no attributes will continue to use the product stock level.

You can return to using only product level stock figures by uninstalling the mod (basically by over-writing the six core Zen Cart files changed by this mode and listed in the release notes with the equivalents from a default Zen Cart installation. You would then need to reset the stock for those products to which you had allocated product variants or synced the stock values.

Can you tell me a little more background to what you are trying to do so that I can take it into account for future Attribute Stock requirements?

[trollboy]

Can you tell me a little more background to what you are trying to do so that I can take it into account for future Attribute Stock requirements?

I have a mix of products, some of which require stock by attributes (e.g. tea-light holders which come in small, medium and large). But I also sell cushion covers, which I want to be able to sell with or without the cusion. This is more of a stock by raw materials problem, but since I have lots of cushions I was just going to keep track of stock using the total number of cushion covers sold, with or without cushions inside.
So the product is priced by attribute (with cushion or without), but I want to opt out of keeping track of the stock by attributes.

Is there any reason that all products with attributes have to be included in stock by attributes? Would it be difficult to add an option to allow products to opt out of tracking stock by attributes?

[kuroi]

You have an example of what I think of as the "gift wrapping" problem. A situation where one of the attributes of a product refers to something that accompanies the product and has stock that is completely independent of that of the product itself. Ironcially, your attribute goes on the inside, rather than the outside.

It probably wouldn't be too difficult to extend the mod to cope with this, but there are no plans to do so. The reason for this is that the functionality is due to be incorporated into the next major release of Zen Cart and to push it to the next level will require a complete rewrite (in fact a completely different approach), so any changes made now would have a short life and make migration to the next release more difficult. However, coping with exactly the situation that you describe looms large in my recommendations to the Zen Cart team.