Shipping Option Problem

[Rasyr]

Okay, we have a slight problem regarding shipping options. Let me see if I can explain this properly.

We sell a variety of product, mostly books and PDFs, but we also sell miniatures (i.e. very small modules of space ships used in a game), and boxed game or two.

However, Zen Cart is offering Media Mail as an option for products that do not qualify for Media Mail based on size or shape of the package (the books qualify, but the box game does not and neither do the miniatures).

However, Zen Cart offers Media Mail to both. My boss wishes for a way to be able to turn Media Mail off for those products for which it does not qualify.

Anybody know of any mods or options that will allow me to do that?

Thanks in advance!!!

[Ajeh]

This would have to be customized to identify the Order as only those Products that qualify and those that do not would trigger an exclusion for Media Mail ...

There isn't anything built into Zen Cart for this, at this time ...

Is there anything in the products table that identify these Products that do qualify?

[Rasyr]

There is nothing in the product entry page that I can see that could be used to exclude it.

[Ajeh]

Nothing like:

1 All products_model start with XYZ ...

2 All master_categories_id are categories_id 32 ...

3 All Products are in categories_id 45 ...

anything at all along those lines?

If so, those can be used as "triggers" to test for the Products ...

If not, a new field could be added to "flag" these Products so that there is a "trigger" ...

Next, once the "trigger" is found ... do you want to just disable Media if the "whole" order is not "Media" ... I am assuming that this would be the case as breaking the order in parts would be very costly to code ...

[Rasyr]

unfortunately not.

[Ajeh]

You could add a new field and the necessary controls in the Admin so that this new field could be the flag, something like:
products_is_media

And then that could be tested for using the function in the shopping_cart class for:

  /**
   * Method to calculate the number of items in a cart based on an abitrary property
   *
   * $check_what is the fieldname example: 'products_is_free'
   * $check_value is the value being tested for - default is 1
   * Syntax: $_SESSION['cart']->in_cart_check('product_is_free','1');
   *
   * @param string product field to check
   * @param mixed value to check for
   * @return integer number of items matching restraint
   */
  function in_cart_check($check_what, $check_value='1') {

then if the quantity of products_is_media is the same as the total items in the cart, then show the Media type in the shipping module and if it does not match disable it in the quote ...