Date Available

**Nick1973** · 8 Jul 2020, 02:50 PM

Originally Posted by mc12345678

Are you wanting the product never to be added to the cart or only when the date available has been met? The discussion doesn't seem so clear.

I want the add to cart button to 'go live' once the date has been met.

Currently people can still add to the cart before the date has been met and I don't want this to happen.

I am not sure, I think 1.5.7 already has this feature implemented. However my client wants it working in 1.5.6c

**mc12345678** · 9 Jul 2020, 02:49 AM

Originally Posted by Nick1973

I want the add to cart button to 'go live' once the date has been met.

Currently people can still add to the cart before the date has been met and I don't want this to happen.

I am not sure, I think 1.5.7 already has this feature implemented. However my client wants it working in 1.5.6c

The new 1.5.7 feature is about halfway between what I think is requested and what currently happens. The new feature takes a product that has been turned off (hidden, disabled, however you know the idea) and turns it on when the available date is reached as identified by someone accessing the store side on/after that date. What that means is the "public" doesn't "know" that the product exists until the date arrives. This is different than the product being seen, but not yet purchaseable... Then there's the way things "easily" are which is to allow sales of the item before it's availability so long as the store "thinks" that there is a quantity of product remaining.

There is/was a set of that code available to use against 1.5.6. If that still is what is desired, then can get the link(s) to all of that. Just need to do a little research and reference again.

**Nick1973** · 9 Jul 2020, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by mc12345678

The new 1.5.7 feature is about halfway between what I think is requested and what currently happens. The new feature takes a product that has been turned off (hidden, disabled, however you know the idea) and turns it on when the available date is reached as identified by someone accessing the store side on/after that date. What that means is the "public" doesn't "know" that the product exists until the date arrives. This is different than the product being seen, but not yet purchaseable... Then there's the way things "easily" are which is to allow sales of the item before it's availability so long as the store "thinks" that there is a quantity of product remaining.

There is/was a set of that code available to use against 1.5.6. If that still is what is desired, then can get the link(s) to all of that. Just need to do a little research and reference again.

Ok so does this leave the product seen before the date is met but stop it from being purchased or does it only make the product go live on the date being met?

Send me the links anyway as I might be able to do something with it.

**mc12345678** · 9 Jul 2020, 09:31 AM

Originally Posted by Nick1973

Ok so does this leave the product seen before the date is met but stop it from being purchased or does it only make the product go live on the date being met?

Send me the links anyway as I might be able to do something with it.

Product behavior is off/hidden/disabled until available date. Ie. Is not available to the store customers for viewing or purchase until that date and then voila it is present and "fully" available.

That said, there is swguy's post above also "describing" how to do what is requested here.

**mc12345678** · 9 Jul 2020, 10:54 AM

Another alternative that unfortunately has been made a little more difficult to make happen/work is to generate the product as a product, then change the products_type to a document_general product which doesn't allow adding to the cart and then using a variation of the code for ZC 1.5.7 to have the products_type change back to a product on the available date....

Reason it is a little harder to "manage" is that some point in recent version(s) many of the text fields associated with "adding" a product to the cart have been eliminated from the admin display because historically that product type is defaulted to not be added to the cart... To drive that point home, if you can't add a product to the cart, then how can you have a quantity of the product? Unfortunately what that means is that another means to achieve "similar" results ends up needing to exist (or be developed) instead of being able to take advantage of a "formality".

**mc12345678** · 9 Jul 2020, 08:33 PM

The "backwards" compatible version of the code I've been referring to can be found at: https://github.com/zencart/zencart/p...588c327c47d77e

With a little "finagling", could modify it to change the products_type of a product based on a date passing and the products_type currently being say the document general product type (assuming that in current/recent versions that the original data is retained from when it was "converted" to that product type and possibly any edits made to it...)

**DrByte** · 9 Jul 2020, 08:49 PM

Originally Posted by swguy

You could customize zen_get_products_allow_add_to_cart() to return 'N' if the available date is non-blank and in the future.
(See zen_get_new_date_range() for logic that does this.)

I agree. This allow-add-to-cart function is probably the right place to do it.
Perhaps even adding a custom Notifier hook here would let you extract your custom logic to someplace else.

I was thinking maybe you could use a special trigger for the date-available date: eg: set the datetime to end in :58, and then in your function check if it ends in :58 return N regardless of the other conditions normally checked. Food for thought: at least that way it wouldn't require a db schema change.

While the product-type swapping could work too, I worry that it might create confusion admin-side, and might create some SEO confusion with URL differences caused by the different type_handler page names.