Stock by Attribute v4.0 addon for v1.3.5-1.3.9

[kuroi]

i have a product with attribute. how do i make it so that it allows checkout even when a certain attribute is out of stock and will just notify the customer that the product will be shipped it 3 weeks.

You can allow checkout even when there isn't sufficient stock by setting Admin > Configuration > Stock > Allow Checkout to true.

You can't notify the customer as to when the stock for the particular product and attribute combination will be shipped as your Zen Cart doesn't have this information to communicate.

[kuroi]

Have just installed v4.7 and wondering if there is any way of changing the 'Quantity in Cart' so that it changes with the attribute selected, rather than showing the total number of product in the cart.

e.g. at the moment if I add 2 yellow and 1 red item the Quantity in Cart shows 3 whichever attribute I select in the dropdown.

Alternatively is it possible just to remove the Quantity in Cart text and count because it doesn't make sense to me to have "3"

Do you mean in the shopping cart? If so, it sounds as though there's a problem with your Zen Cart, as each different combination of attributes should get its own line.

[kuroi]

I just installed 4.7a on a Zen Cart 1.38a installation. I have an issue to draw to attention to and a question.

The first time I went to set stock quantities on a product with two attribute variations, I accidentally selected Both for the product to select for change. I got a Headers Already Sent error that I traced to admin/products_with_attributes_stock.php, line 193. The following echo statement generates the error.

echo "att: $attributes<bR>\n";

The line generated output that displays "att: 1/2".
I do not get the error when I correctly select a single attribute to change.

I commented the line out and everything seems to work fine.

I really like the feature that displays the amount of stock available in the Shopping Cart when a customer orders more than the current stock level. However, the Shopping Cart displays a message, "Items not in stock will be placed on backorder" and the customer is billed for the entire quantity.

My bank rep that is setting up my Authorize.net account told me that all orders must be shipped within seven days from the order date. Since that is not possible with some backorders, how do I prevent backorders from occurring?

If there are 5 items in stock and the customer is trying to buy 10, is there a way for me to advise them to adjust the order quantity or prevent them from placing an order for items that exceed the quantity that I can ship?

The best solution would be to actually put it on backorder and not bill the customer for backordered items until they ship, but I don't think we can do that with the current version of Zen Cart. *** hint, hint, hint for future release ***

I'm afraid I can't comment on the coding for the 4.7a as I've never seen it (is that the same as the 4.7MULTIADD version in the downloads area?)

You can prevent backorders by setting Admin > Configuration > Stock > Check stock level to "true" and in the same menu setting Allow Checkout to "false".

You can also change the text of the message that the customer sees in the shopping cart, by editing the relevant language file.

You "best solution" isn't really feasible and is unlikely to become so. Stock by Attributes doesn't know anything about how your payment module functions, but has to assume that it is in the majority which would have no way of collecting a second payment at a later date. If your payment module doesn't support it, then you would only be able to collect the later payment by holding card information in a way which for most Zen Cart would be a flagrant breach of the stringent card regulations, and therefore no something that you're even likely to see built in to Zen Cart.

[kuroi]

If I dont select a checkbox, I can continue the order without anything selected and even check out! Is there a way to only continue if only a check box is selected?

No. Stock by Attribute ignores checkboxes. You've told us that you're using them for colors. Most times that would be a mistake as checkboxes represent "AND" options, unlike radio buttons which are "OR" options. Using checkboxes in place of radio buttons would need you to define and hold data about an exponentially larger number of product variants.

Problem 2
This Product page also serves as a history of the different variations of the product for consumers information. When a product is no longer available, I would like to keep it on the Product page.

Is there a way to eliminate the checkbox for that variation? Or is there a way to have an add to cart on each variation, versus using checkbox's and having one general add to cart?

This is a question about Zen Cart in general rather than Stock by Attributes, but I believe that the answer is again no.

Problem 3
I have two variations, one with a stock of 4, one with a stock of 0. The stock of 4 works great and doesn't allow someone to check out with more than 4, but the one with zero, even though it gives the warning message, it will let you checkout with an order.

Not enough information here to diagnose the problem, but it sounds like it could be a symptom of one of the installation problems that people sometimes ahve and which have been dealt with at length in earlier posts.

[Webskipper]

Are there comment tags to look for so I know what code to insert? I have installed all the other unique pages.

[Webskipper]

Just installed the contribution. Very tedious as the mods are not clearly defined so you need to compare each incident of // and or attributes when modifying modified core pages.

Perhaps the next version can be more clear.

In admin, the heading shows but no columns or functions.

In the directions where is includes/modules/YOUR_TEMPLATE ? All there is is includes/modules/pages.

Was there another copy of tpl_shopping_cart_default.php to overwrite in includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_shopping_cart_default.php ?

Please clarify. See attached image. Thanks in advance.

[kuroi]

Just installed the contribution. Very tedious as the mods are not clearly defined so you need to compare each incident of // and or attributes when modifying modified core pages.

If I understand your series of posts correctly, you have chosen not to follow the installation process designed for this complex mod, and instead are attempting the apply all the changes to the core files by hand. I'm not surprised that you're finding it tedious. It's not designed to be done this way.

Perhaps the next version can be more clear.

If you read back over the thread, you'd find that this mod has had multiple owners over a relatively long period of time and is now on life support being kept alive only until it is superceded by changes in core Zen Cart to provide this functionality. So I wouldn't hold out any hope for a new version.

In admin, the heading shows but no columns or functions.

Implementing the changes by hand would be a long and complex job. It would be unlikely that you would get it right first time. I recommend getting a good file comparison tool such as WinMerge to compare your changes to the files where the changes have already been done for you.

In the directions where is includes/modules/YOUR_TEMPLATE ? All there is is includes/modules/pages.

This is a left over reference to earlier versions where the modules/attributes.php file needed to be over-ridden. Although that was dropped from this mod a few versions back, there is an add-on mod to it (!) where I believe that this is still necessary. If you're just using stock by attributes, just ignore it.

Was there another copy of tpl_shopping_cart_default.php to overwrite in includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_shopping_cart_default.php ?

You wouldn't over-write this file. You would over-ride it by placing the version providing in the release package in your equivalent of the includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates folder.

[kuroi]

I just installed 4.7a on a Zen Cart 1.38a installation. I have an issue to draw to attention to and a question.

The first time I went to set stock quantities on a product with two attribute variations, I accidentally selected Both for the product to select for change. I got a Headers Already Sent error that I traced to admin/products_with_attributes_stock.php, line 193. The following echo statement generates the error.

echo "att: $attributes<bR>\n";

The line generated output that displays "att: 1/2".
I do not get the error when I correctly select a single attribute to change.

I commented the line out and everything seems to work fine.

I've now taken a look at the multi-add version. It is the same thing as 4.7a, which seems to be it's internal name.

I can confirm that you can safely comment out line 193. It's almost certainly a debug statement that has been left in there erroneously.

[kuroi]

I uninstalled zen cart and resintalled it and the module and now everything seems peachy. Obviously some error on my part was to blame.

... or on the part of your FTP program. Your symptoms sound like not all the files made it safely to your server first time around.

[kuroi]

Kuroi,

Thanks for the great mod. I can now stop refunding customers and preventing them from coming back.

However, I have couple of questions since I'm having some difficulty creating query regarding above-quoted message.

How should I match my MS-Access data that does not include Zen-cart's products_id and stock_attributes fields with Zen-Cart's? I'm not in a power to specify neither products_id nor stock_attributes when I created them.

How would you write a query if I could import products_attributes, products and products_options_values tables into my MS-Access DB (or any DB), when I also had, for the convenience, Easy Populate importable table?

Stock by Attributes can't work without knowing the product ID and attribute IDs to which each stock figure applies. So you would need to upload your data to a temporary table in your database and then use a SQL query to create a join between whatever information your Zen Cart products and your external data have in common, e.g. product name and option name. However, unless these match exactly, you will be unable to make the join.