Unique SKU for each attribute?

[ryanf]

Hello, I am in the process of modifying zen cart and have come across this issue. I have lots of products with attributes such as flavor and size. When the user selects a flavor and size and adds it to the cart is there a way I can have that combinations SKU appear? Or even give it one?

For example say the product is Ice Cream
The three attributes for the option name flavor are:
Vanilla
Strawberry
Chocolate

Now in the warehouse:
the Vanilla Ice Cream has a SKU of 02883
the Strawberry Ice Cream has a SKU of 02884
the Chocolate Ice Cream has a SKU of 02885

Can this appear on the invoices and in the shopping cart?

Thanks for the help.

[Kim]

Sorry, but SKUs are not a feature of Zen Cart at this time, however they are being worked on for the next major release. Release date not yet determined.

[ryanf]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Any idea of the complexity to add it myself or where I should beginning looking at the code? I was thinking of adding another field when adding a set of attributes then making a table with the sku, product_id, and attribute_ids such as

12345, 1, 12_13_94

I'll have to think about it more I guess.

[Merlinpa1969]

I can tell you that it would be more work than its worth expecailly since you and the dev team will most likely do things totally different then your cart will be stuck and stale in regards to upgrading,

[ryanf]

Well, I kind of need that functionality sooner than later and since I have no clue on when the dev team will come out with it, my two options are build it myself or use another cart. If you don't think I should build it, do you know any carts that have that functionality?

[ryanf]

Hello, I have been working on this problem but I am running into troubles finding out where everything is and what pages do what functions.

This is how I plan on accomplishing having a SKU for each combination of attributes.

I have a table:
products_attributes_skus
products_id
products_attributes_ids
sku

In the page attribute_controller.php I have added a for with a select box with a list of all attributes and options associated with the product and a text field for the sku. The admin will select the attributes and fill in a sku number and hit insert, this then puts the info into the database.

For example on product 180 I select Size: Large - Color: Blue and enter the sku 12345. Then 180, 113_140, 12345 gets inserted into the new table where 113 and 140 are the attribute ids the the selections.

This is all I have done. Now I need to change where ever the product is displayed such as the invoices and billing, to show that sku number. Anyone have a list of the files I would need to change to do this?

Where ever the product is displayed, I would look up the attributes in the cart table and then create the products_attributes_id and look up the SKU for that combination for that product. It doesn't seem too hard, I just don't know where to look in the code.

Thanks,
Ryan

[ryanf]

If anyone is interested, I have finished this mod for my site. It wasn't too bad, took about a day and a half and that included trying to find everything and figuring out all the variable names.

If anyone is interested in how I get it, I can try and post the steps to get it working. My shop setup may be different than yours but it might help other people to get it going. Setting up the products is kind of a pain as there is an extra step after adding the attributes but its not that bad I guess.

It cuts down on the would be required number of products by a lot depending on how many attributes values/names you have. For example I have one product
that has two sizes and two flavors for each size. Normally that would be 4 different products if you needed a SKU number for each combination but with the changes I can do it in 1 and have the unique sku number for the choosen atrributes to show up on the invoices/packing slips/emails/admin sections.

I have one product that has three sizes, 4 flavors on one size, 10 on the other two so that would be 24 products, but I will be able to do it with one.

[AaronN]

I'd be interested in this mod, if you could send me details that would be awesome, from what I can tell this still isn't part of the "latest" release.
TIA
-Aaron

[rued]

I think there is a lot of people looking for such a solution, please post it here or best of all - make it a contribution for the Download section. ;)

[ryanf]

Hey I will have to look at the code and see if I can remember how I did it. It was a while ago so let me dig around and see if I can come up with some steps.