Regarding Product Attributes

[AmazonPayments]

Hi All,

I have added a Product with attributes to the shopping cart. now i get the product id as say for e.g. 131:114b3ba9e51af1314e82dd3ce5ee88eb

I would like to understand what this means and how it is generated.

the user is not logged into the zencart site. the user just added the product to shopping cart.

- Bala
Amazon Payments

[gilby]

Hi All,

I have added a Product with attributes to the shopping cart. now i get the product id as say for e.g. 131:114b3ba9e51af1314e82dd3ce5ee88eb

I would like to understand what this means and how it is generated.

the user is not logged into the zencart site. the user just added the product to shopping cart.

- Bala
Amazon Payments

As far as I understand it.
Its a way of producing a unigue id using the product_id and relevent attrib ids combinations of the selection.
This keeps it unique from the the same product with different attributes. It can now be uniquely accumulated, and displayed separately in the cart and checkout.

How is it calculated, no idea.

[CJPinder]

Hi All,

I have added a Product with attributes to the shopping cart. now i get the product id as say for e.g. 131:114b3ba9e51af1314e82dd3ce5ee88eb

I would like to understand what this means and how it is generated.

It is the product id followed by a MD5 hash of the product attributes. It is generated by the zen_get_uprid() function in /includes/functions/functions_general.php .

Regards,
Christian.

[AmazonPayments]

It is the product id followed by a MD5 hash of the product attributes. It is generated by the zen_get_uprid() function in /includes/functions/functions_general.php .

Regards,
Christian.

gilby and CJPinder,

thank you for replying.

any specific reason why we are doing MD5 hash for the attributes? is it really needed while creating orders?

[DrByte]

The hash is a unique combination of all the selected attributes for a given product when added to the cart.
Since there could be hundreds of choices, the hash is the way to uniquely note which options were selected when the item was added to the cart.
One of the several ways it's used is to reconstruct the item details as at the time of being added to the cart. Removing it loses that important information.

[AmazonPayments]

One of the several ways it's used is to reconstruct the item details as at the time of being added to the cart. Removing it loses that important information.

but MD5 is a one-way hash as far as i know. once generated in the shopping cart, it cannot be decrypted. i wonder how it is used while creating the order. also i found that the cart items are stored in session. once user logged in, the item attributes are stored in the table i guess.

[DrByte]

Let me clarify:

There is a customer_basket and a customer_basket_attribute and the prid is used to:
1) relate the two database tables together
2) match up the attribute combo to know when things are built together so if you add 5 products_id 27 to the cart but 1 is Red, 2 are Green and 2 are Blue , while the products_id is the same, the prid makes them unique so you can add more unique combinations to the cart, or delete the specific one, etc.

[AmazonPayments]

DrByte,

thank you. i got clarified.