Adding a required field during Checkout that Shows on the Invoice

[Rabbcon]

Hello,

Let me start off by saying I do not know if I'm posting in the right category. I was unable to find an answer via a search. Forgive me for errors.

ISSUE
We are using an attribute on all of the products. This attribute is "Mail with Discretion" mwd. If a customer chooses to mwd they select "yes" to this attribute for every single product. This is a pain for them.

HOPE
Is there a way that we can create a required field in the checkout process that will ask this question (mwd) one time? Additionally, this information needs to be sent to us some how, via the invoice or an email alert that states this customer wants mwd.

HOW TO
If this is possible, how do we do it?

I look forward to your reply.

Thank you.

[Rabbcon]

**bump**

[kiddo]

You can easily modify the Optional Shipping Insurance mod to say Mail With Discretion instead. (even charge a bit extra for it if you wish.)

[Rabbcon]

Thanks Kiddo... You are right... I did not think about that. We already have that installed and we can just modify the code. :) Thank you so much!

[kiddo]

I think you would only have to do a little creative editing with the text so instead of saying the Insurance blah blah... the wording offers the special shipping instead.

Cheers!

[lotii10396]

Back to the original question, I would like to add a text field on the checkout confirmation for users to type in "Where they found us" - so obviously a simple yes/no field isn't going to work here.

I have modified the template file [ tpl_checkout_confirmation_default.php] to a. give me a new textarea b. run some javascript

I was *hoping* that I could just append this string to the "comments" hidden input field which is output earlier on the page. I *can* but it doesn't write it all to the database. bugger!

I am quite happy simply to append this data to the [ comments ] value, this keeps it pretty simple and doesn't require new database fields or the like.

But obviously this looks like it needs to be done some other way. If it cant be done dynamically with scripts then I gather I would need to modify the php code on the next executing page - so I was wondering if any ZC experts could point me to the next file.

Any recommendations (ie modify the array, or just append the inserted database value, or.....etc!) welcome.

Ta, Adrian

[lotii10396]

OK, I see I am probably going to have to sort this myself, and feel reasonably confident to do so "in this area". I know the database field is named [comments] in the [orders_status_history] table AND at this point are planning to edit the: includes/classes/order.php file to try and append data to the array value from an additional form input written onto the order confirmation page

Hopefully this will then simply use the existing ZC processing to write the data to the database.

I would appreciate any Zen Cart experts giving me their quick thought, especially with regards to any other implications of altering the executing php file - and where else it may be called *apart* from the order confirmation page.

[lotii10396]

No response yet of course. This is my main gripe with Zen Cart, even though it is a great OS product.

The problem is when you actually want to do something a little different. As detailed above I am more than prepared to delve into the code and suffer all of the debugging effort that core code modifications require, however it would *really* help if a Zen Cart expert/team member could give me just a little insight into where to start. But I can't get any response, and that means:

- there are no experts who know this information
- there are no experts who can be bothered responding

Unfortunately for me these problems with quasi-support is Zen Cart's limiting factor.

As a reasonably intelligent developer I am using Zen Cart because (apart from the obvious cost factor) I can customise the cart to suit rather than write the darn things from scratch (which I have done in the past).

I accept the code "quirks" because of this, but I do want to be able to customise beyond the standard parameters - and to do this effectively I need to know how the code processes.

At the end of the day this "simple" mod is something the client wants and it is quite frustrating that it seems I would need to do all of the code reverse-engineering in this area to implement it. Obviously someone must have written this code....

OK, I could pay someone else to do it, (but who?) and then this simply raises other development issues that tip the scales towards me simply handing it all of the work (and the hassles) to a commercial software provider.

It has been a great product and it has given my client a great start into online trading, but for me the signs are now pointing towards the site just maturing beyond the point where Zen Cart is the right option.

My two cents anyway.

Anyone got any recommendations (actual users please) on commercial software that is reasonably easy to get data from Zen Cart?

[Rabbcon]

I wish I had an answer for you and for myself. I'm posting because I did not want your post to go ignored as many (in my opinion) do.

[kobra]

This might be close and has been in the downloads for a time if one looked
http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=186

Anyone got any recommendations (actual users please) on commercial software that is reasonably easy to get data from Zen Cart?

What type of data?