Change the Qty Available from Numerical to Text

[Mike_Dean]

Hi,

I'm trying to find out how to change the Qty Available from numerical to numerical and or text

Some of our suppliers list the qty available in numerical, and others in text such as ;

Available
Back to Back
>5


Etc etc...
Any suggestions, or assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

[RodG]

Hi,

I'm trying to find out how to change the Qty Available from numerical to numerical and or text

Some of our suppliers list the qty available in numerical, and others in text such as ;

Available
Back to Back
>5

Etc etc...
Any suggestions, or assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

php has the following functions that you can use:

strval() --> num 2 str
intval() --> str 2 num

I have a gut feeling that you have asked the wrong question though.
Exactly what is it that you are trying to do?

Cheers
Rod

[gjh42]

Are you getting automated feeds that you import with easy populate? Or do you manually enter such information?

The product quantity field is designed to be handled as a number, and even though it might (or might not) hold text if you gave it that, the processing functions would choke on it. There are several ways you could deal with the situation, depending on how you receive and enter the quantity, and how you want to display it.

[Mike_Dean]

Exactly what is it that you are trying to do?

Cheers
Rod

A number of products have the qty as 0 with "Back-to-Back" as the availability status, others have >5. This one I can handled, just run a simple formula in excel to convert >5 to 5

Rather than simply display 0 stock, I was hoping to have those with text inserted into the Qty field.

I realize with the Qty as text I cannot then use the reducing stock option when an order is placed, but as we rely predominantly on the suppliers feed, I can turn that option off.

[RodG]

A number of products have the qty as 0 with "Back-to-Back" as the availability status, others have >5. This one I can handled, just run a simple formula in excel to convert >5 to 5

Rather than simply display 0 stock, I was hoping to have those with text inserted into the Qty field.

I realize with the Qty as text I cannot then use the reducing stock option when an order is placed, but as we rely predominantly on the suppliers feed, I can turn that option off.

If this were *my* problem, the first thing I'd do would be to modify the database itself and change the field type for products.products_quantity from the current "float" into "varchar".

This will allow the quantities to be entered as text strings.

If you are lucky, this field will then be output to screen "as is", and your main requirement will be solved.

I would however expect a few repercussions due to the fact that zencart also uses this field for stock control/availability, and will therefore resolve to "0", suggesting there is nothing in stock.

Depending on the extent and effects of these repercussions I'd either decide to take care of them one at a time, or revert the database back to its original state and try a different approach.

My alternate approach would be to *add another* field to the products table, and call it something like "products_quantity_text". It is then a matter of modifying the relevant parts of the zencart code so that any output uses this field rather than the original "products_quantity" field. As with my first approach, the amount of work required to locate and make all the modifications won't be really known until you try it.

Cheers
Rod

[Mike_Dean]

If this were *my* problem, the first thing I'd do would be to modify the database itself and change the field type for products.products_quantity from the current "float" into "varchar".

This will allow the quantities to be entered as text strings.

If you are lucky, this field will then be output to screen "as is", and your main requirement will be solved.

I would however expect a few repercussions due to the fact that zencart also uses this field for stock control/availability, and will therefore resolve to "0", suggesting there is nothing in stock.

Depending on the extent and effects of these repercussions I'd either decide to take care of them one at a time, or revert the database back to its original state and try a different approach.

My alternate approach would be to *add another* field to the products table, and call it something like "products_quantity_text". It is then a matter of modifying the relevant parts of the zencart code so that any output uses this field rather than the original "products_quantity" field. As with my first approach, the amount of work required to locate and make all the modifications won't be really known until you try it.

Cheers
Rod

Hey Rod,

Very much appreciate you taking the time to document this.

I tried the first approach, and as you suspected, Zen Cart just reverts it back to 0.. regardless of what I set the field to in the database.

I tried a few of the options via admin eg turning off stock control, but to no avail, straight back to 0


The second option seems feasible, (if I had the confidence to attack it.!)

I think in the interim I may have to resort to some data manipulation in the spread sheet before I upload it

[gjh42]

A reasonable workaround may be to have the spreadsheet take all text that doesn't easily translate into a number and set it to something like 9999 (or a quantity you would never see in reality). Then a small bit of code at output locations could test for the quantity being 9999 and change an output variable's value from a number to a word like"Available" or "In Stock".

This would not give the precision of your various suppliers' feeds, but would be basically functional.

[Mike_Dean]

A reasonable workaround may be to have the spreadsheet take all text that doesn't easily translate into a number and set it to something like 9999 (or a quantity you would never see in reality). Then a small bit of code at output locations could test for the quantity being 9999 and change an output variable's value from a number to a word like"Available" or "In Stock".

This would not give the precision of your various suppliers' feeds, but would be basically functional.

Thanks,

All sounds great in theory, but you lose me when it comes to creating the code out that output end.. I would not have a clue where to start.. Give me a spread sheet in excel and I'll have it making cups of tea for you, but code.. uurrghhhh...

Having said that,

If I am going to take it from a text base to a number base, and then generate code to take the number back to text, would it not make more sense to have the code accept text in the first place ?


Cheers,
Mike

[gjh42]

Yes, except that that would require a *lot* more work (or possibly be unstable) than the workaround I described (which would only take a couple of lines of code in the PHP).

[gjh42]

A mockup of the code required could look like this:

if ($products_qty == 9999) {
  $qty_output = 'Available';
}else{
  $qty_output = $products_qty;
}

//then use $qty_output where $products_qty would be output 

You would substitute whatever variable actually holds product quantity in a particular location for $products_qty.