USPS Shipping Method vs Product Type

[speakparrot]

I've searched the forums on this with no luck and am wondering if anyone could tell me if a patch or fix of sorts had ben created for the following issue:

In essence I need the shipping options to only display what is applicable to the product (i.e. a book gets only the media mail option).

Thanks in advance!

[Ajeh]

At this time, this is not built into Zen Cart ... you would need to customize the products in some manner then customize the shipping module to know what to allow when and what to do when multiple product types are used or weights etc. etc. etc. to cover all of the possibilities ...

[Ron Haltermon]

I have the same interest as Speakparrot, and was searching for the same thing. If any media products are in the shopping cart, then USPS media postal rates would apply for that/those items. That would be GRRREATT! We are just about ready to go live and offer a mixed bag of products. We are about to upgrade 3.8 to 3.8a and then make sure of all settings. I have found this to be a delightful experience in setting up and am satisfied 100 % with everything except the shipping options! Good job, gang!

[zb21hay]

We have been in the same situation for some time now and are at the point where we would be willing to fund development of such a module if anyone i able and interested in helping.
Z

[Ajeh]

I am still interested in knowing what each of you think should be done when there is a mixed cart of products?

[zb21hay]

When there is a mixed cart I would say that Media Mail should not be an option. This would work for our needs, I not sure of anyone else.

If someone wanted to get into offering two separate shipment or the like I think the project would get too complicated too fast.

What I envision is, in the product set-up screen there being a check box that says "This item is available for Media Mail rate shipping". Then when each product is set up, the admin could toggle this on for items they wanted to have the option of being shipped Media Mail. The default could be off, so should someone have a huge catalog of items they would only have to hunt down the ones they wanted to offer Media Mail on. Then, when someone places an order and the shipping screen is brought up, a quick scan of the products would be done and should all the products have Media Mail option then Media Mail would appear as one of the selections on the postal options page. Should any one item in the shopping cart not have Media Mail option checked then shipping by Media Mail would not be shown.

Just my ideas, like I said I don't have the programming ability to do it, but should some programmer have the ability and want t make a couple bucks we would be happy to work with them. (Or we could pay them in Moose Products - www.themoosestore.com)

Z

[Ajeh]

This could be done with a flag or extra field on the products table that indicates Media Mail or not ...

Then a check on the cart for how many items are in it vs how many validate as Media Mail based on this new field would be able to be used to determin enabling or disabling the Media option on USPS ...

[ChrisDrumm]

I am looking for a similar option. All our books & DVD's are in a category - My thought would be that if all the items in the cart are from that category, Media Mail is an option - or conversely, if there is an item in the cart that is not from that category, Media Mail is disabled.

I made a hack to the UPS and USPS modules that when the cart is over 200lbs they are disabled - and conversely, in the flat rate, on orders over 200lbs the flat rate in enabled... here is the code

    // disable only when entire cart is free shipping
    if (zen_get_shipping_enabled($this->code)) {
      $this->enabled = ((MODULE_SHIPPING_USPS_STATUS == 'True') ? true : false);
    }

    // disable module if weight is above 200 lbs:
    if (IS_ADMIN_FLAG === false) {
      if ($_SESSION['cart']->show_weight() > 200) $this->enabled = false;
    }

So... would something similar to this wrapped around the Media Mail option in the USPS module work - just a simple if/then statement?

If so, how can you check an item in the cart to see what category it's from?

[Ajeh]

If all Products that are Media Type are in one categories_id then you could check the count against the number of products with the master_categories_id that matches this categories_id and when they are the same, you know it is all media ... and when different then you know to skip it ...

I thought I posted something similar on FIRST CLASS the other day that you could probably use to show you where in the code you need to manage a switch ...

[Ron Haltermon]

I like ChrisDrumm's idea. If mixed bag, then it would be nice to have the media option not appear. At the moment I have added text which informs the customer that only books and cd's qualify for the USPS media rate.