Electronic Submission of orders

I have been given the task of setting up a magazine subscription ecommerce site. The magazine fullfillment center my client will be using is requesting that we submit orders to them electronically via a .dat file. Below is the format that they want the data

1 ABCD00000000 0104501200001001000000012001N 2008121800000000000 0000000000ERIC UUTINEN 15720 HIDDEN LAKE CIRCLE CLERMONT FL 34711 0 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Does anyone have any idea how I can do this with zencart? thanks

Cindy

You would need a full definition of that dat file to get the information in that format ...

Then, is this a daily batch on the dat file or per order?

How is the dat file sent to them?

Full definition of the dat file? Do you mean what each set of characters represents (date, customer, etc.)?

It would be a daily batch on the dat file and it would be sent via ftp to the fullfillment centers server.

Without the specs on the break down it is hard to guess just what you need to send, but more or less ... there is always a solution ...

You just need to break down each component and build the file ...

But that line you show is a bit vague as to what all they need per order per item ...

12 customers order 1 magazine each ...

12 customers order 1 or 3 magazines each ...

1 customer orders 1 magazine but 3 copies, 1 for the house, 1 for work and 1 for the car ...

Ahh I see what you mean. I will ask more questions about the break downs. Thanks and I will probably be back.

Hi there
typically a .dat file has one transaction per line. In your case I would think a line is a subscription of a customer to a mag.
What you need to get is what each position in a line stand form eg
1-10 customer code
11-19 order date
etc
then all you need todo is to create a SQL welect statement to extract the required information and export it to a file
This can be done using phpmyadmin.
If you get stuck with writing the select statement then post what you have come up with and I'm sure we can help you out. Note that you will need to run a join over zen_orders and zen_orders_products

Yeah I think that is the hard part is trying to figure out the positions. I am attaching a zip file that they sent me with the layout of what they need. I just can't seem to get my head around this for some reason.

Hi again
That looks pretty straight forward to me. What you need to do is:

1. identify the fields you need to fill in
2. work out the position these are in (1st to last position number)
3. use filler for positions not used (wg blank or 0, check with client)
4. write SQL seclect code to extract data and fills in filler positions
   or write a PHP script that writes to they file if you prefer