Using a PHP variable as an option value

[dudemagma]

How exactly are the options built in the shopping cart? Are they encased into a string (eg "text") first and echoed out or is there some other reason that variables as options get neutered somewhere in the process?

I've been trying for months now to integrate a separate piece of software into the cart (an online image editing platform) so that it will show the image name in the cart.

To do this, the solution I ran across was to stick a recordset into the top of the cart that called the necessary information from the database and then stick $row['image'] as a value in the cart, so that the image would be attached to the product.

Somewhere along the line that variable is being killed and I am not clear on where or why.

When I just stick in the $row['image'] as the value it treats it like html and echos it out as is. When I use <?php echo $row['image']; ?> it still treats it as html and addtionally the php open and close tags as comments, causing it to only display in the source code. I've tried using eval(), but it returns a null value.

I had a solution, or thought I did... I edited the attributes.php file to have $row['image'] as the value of a hidden field in the read only area. However, this doesn't display right in the cart.

Edits made to the attibutes.php file:

<?php 
if ($products_options_names->fields['products_options_type'] == PRODUCTS_OPTIONS_TYPE_READONLY) {
                          $tmp_html .= '<input type="hidden" name ="id['. $products_options_names->fields['products_options_id'] .']"'.'value="'. $row['image'] .'" />' . $row['image'];
                    $tmp_html .= $products_options_details;
                  } else {
                    $zv_display_select_option ++;
                  }
?>

When you get to the cart, it recognizes there is an attribute there that it needs to show, but doesn't display either name or value.

So I'm back where I started.

The beginning of the cart can be found at http://www.myfabphoto.com/create.php

Be warned though, the cart isn't all the way set up so don't actually send through orders.


Any help at all is and always will be appreciated...