Can I do this? Placing an order auto-creates a product based on its attributes?

[thombrooks]

Hello, I'm trying to think through the ramifications of coding a Zen Cart hack which would allow the following behavior:

- A person purchases a product called "Register a team to walk in this charity event."

- There are attributes for Team Name (text), Description (text), and Photo (file upload).

On successful purchase of the product (or the product may be free, whatever):

- System creates a new product in another category, whose name and description are based on Team Name and Description attributes, above, and product photo is the one uploaded (if any.)

Other product fields would be set to default values (like the cost, $1; minimum quantity: 5) or a constructed value (like the product model might be a prefix + auto-incremented number).

And of COURSE, the product is NOT ACTIVE until an admin 'blesses' it by checking it over before publishing it! (I may be crazy, but I'm not totally dumb.)

The goal here is to emulate fundraising websites where a person can sign up to do a charity event, then invite their friends / family / coworkers to visit their own custom fundraising webpage to pledge contributions to that charity.

Each custom product's title would be something like, 'Support So-and-so - Any Amount' and would cost $1 (minimum qty 5), so you can enter any quantity 5 or more to donate any amount to their campaign.

I already have coded a quick and dirty extra email field on products which, when that product is ordered, sends a report to that email address saying, "Good news! Customer Name [[email protected]] just made a donation of $X to your campaign! To date, your total is $Y! Keep up the good work!" (Where $Y is the sum of all purchases of that product to date.)

The main information I'm looking for here is not, "You're crazy!" but rather, any big pitfalls that you may be aware of, any specific files in ZC that I need to make myself aware of, etc.

Of course, if there's already a module or hack that does this, I'm all ears, but I'm not holding my breath - this concept seems pretty out there, huh?

Thanks for reading!

[RodG]

I can't see any reason why your proposal couldn't be done, but it's going to take some rather initimate knowlege as to the workings of zencart to pull it off.

As far as any pitfalls, I reckon that due to the nature of the project, this is something that doesn't really have a good answer... You'll be treading on completely new ground (as far as I'm aware), so these are going to be something you'll discover yourself as the project proceeds. If you follow good coding practices, and make use of existing zencart functions and examples as much as possible you won't go too far wrong.

As for being crazy, this is a non issue. Many of the worlds greatest inventions and ideas have come from people thought to be crazy. In fact it probably takes a crazy person to think of some of these things on the first place :)

Cheers
Rod