Product expiration date

I have the most current version of ZenCart installed with no "add-ons" currently. I am using Windows XP.

I am NOT a website developer but I can generally move around and change things when necessary. However, I have NO experience with add-ons and coding and I cannot figure out how to get my products to have an expiration date.

Every product I will have listed will expire on a certain date. I need to add that date (have it visable to the customer) and have them automatically removed about a week before the expiration date.

If anyone out there can help me with this it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Make products featured or specials...you can then set expiry date, and add date, when this will happen, in product description

If you could add an expiration date ... why would you want the Product removed a week before the expiration date?

Or, do you mean remove the "display of the expiration date" a week before ...

You have me a bit confused on what you want to do with this expiration date ...

Ajeh:

If you could add an expiration date ... why would you want the Product removed a week before the expiration date?

Or, do you mean remove the "display of the expiration date" a week before ...

You have me a bit confused on what you want to do with this expiration date ...

My products "actually" expire, all of them. So, I couldn't ship something out withing a week or so of the expiration date, it wouldn't get there in time. So I would like to add a product field, i guess, for expiration date. I guess I could manually take them off the site when the time comes. If that makes it easier, I'm not sure.

If I used the "featured/sales" in Zen I would literally have to enter hundreds/thousands of products twice I believe. I have that feature turned off right now because I have no product images to display at all. I don't think that is the best option for me.

If anyone has alot of experience with zen card/coding, I would be happy to let them into my admin for whatever is necessary (via private message of course). I have been spending months on something I know someone with experience could do quite quickly. :(

If you were to add to the products table a field such as:
expiry_date

as a datetime field you could use that to control this ...

I suggest the field:
expiry_date

as that is a good name for future upgrades ... :smile:

I'm not that advanced of a user, I'm not sure how to do that.

This would take some customization to add a new field and then customize the code and how it functions ...

You may wish to post in the Commercial Help Wanted to get this written for you ...

Its more complicated than that, because isn't it possible you can have multiple expiration dates for the same product? You get a new batch in, while the older batch is still sitting on the shelves?

Also, you need to tie the quantity purchased to the dates - because 12 will have an expiry of 12 dec and 12 will have an expiry of 18 dec, so as you sell out the first 12, the expiration date on the website needs to update.

And, the system needs to know how much to turn off, when you reach that expiration date. If there are only 3 left on the shelves that are a week old, it needs to remove those three from the quantity, rather than all of them.

Sorry, I can't be of more help, but it seemed like the solution you guys were discussing probably doesn't fully fulfill your needs.

magicpants:

Its more complicated than that, because isn't it possible you can have multiple expiration dates for the same product? You get a new batch in, while the older batch is still sitting on the shelves?

Also, you need to tie the quantity purchased to the dates - because 12 will have an expiry of 12 dec and 12 will have an expiry of 18 dec, so as you sell out the first 12, the expiration date on the website needs to update.

And, the system needs to know how much to turn off, when you reach that expiration date. If there are only 3 left on the shelves that are a week old, it needs to remove those three from the quantity, rather than all of them.

Sorry, I can't be of more help, but it seemed like the solution you guys were discussing probably doesn't fully fulfill your needs.

There would not be multiple expiration dates for the same product. An old product goes out and doesn't come back, unless it came with a new exp. date..........

Ajeh:

This would take some customization to add a new field and then customize the code and how it functions ...

You may wish to post in the Commercial Help Wanted to get this written for you ...

Unfortunately I can't afford that. I will just have to figure something out or eventually give up on Zen if its not possible.

You're not going to find that feature standard in any e-commerce software, as far as I know.

It sounds pretty simple, you could probably find somebody to do it cheap. But I wouldnt post in the Commercial Help Wanted section, that's a black hole of good intentions. I never got any decent responses from posting work there.

misty:

Make products featured or specials...you can then set expiry date, and add date, when this will happen, in product description

Is this possible? or is it just the Featured or Special "status" that expires. We want to use Salemaker to setup a dated sales/discount scheme, and have the product removed from user access at the end of a preset time period.

As a PHP developer I can assure you it is not simple at all.

off the top of my head you would need..

1. add a field in your database for expiry date in the products table
2. add as field box into your admin page to update the field in the database (need to add the string to the mysql query so it gets added)
3. create a php file on your server somewhere that looks at every product in your listing and says is expiry date > 1 week away if yes delete row if not move onto next row to check.'
4. a CRON script that runs the php script above every 24 hours.

With PHP you can't simply say "make this happen at this time" php only runs when called upon there fore you need a process like cron to actually go and execute script regularly.

You will not achieve this unless you have at least intermediate knowledge of PHP and SQL

NOTE: do keep in mind that the new field name of:
expiry_date

in the products table as a type: datetime

will be compatible with future upgrades to Zen Cart ...

Thanx guys.

flamer:

As a PHP developer I can assure you it is not simple at all.
With PHP you can't simply say "make this happen at this time" php only runs when called upon there fore you need a process like cron to actually go and execute script regularly.
You will not achieve this unless you have at least intermediate knowledge of PHP and SQL

Was thinking about the same sort of procedure, myself. Thanx for the forethought and the warning, it's much appreciated.

Ajeh:

NOTE: do keep in mind that the new field name of:
expiry_date
in the products table as a type: datetime
will be compatible with future upgrades to Zen Cart ...

Thanx for the heads_up, I had noticed your comment on this earlier in the thread.

For the meantime, as our beginning needs will prob be more modest, I figured a daily sql sweep on a datetime field would suffice. For which 'expiry_date' is just perfect. Nothing like having a lil routine to run with morning coffee & a bagel. <Smile>

It was the comment on using the 'Feature'/'Special' expiry date fields, how they work, & how much using using either of them, for this, limits things you can do later with your store, that had perked my curiosity.

Its so nice when things work for you. My life just got sooo much easier. I just installed Easy Populate, and one of the config items is "Make Zero Qty Products Inactive".

I don't even have to set up an expiry_date date field. I can just slurp the product table into Open Office, run a macro on date_added + max_shelf_days to zero out the products that need to come off the shelf, upload the results, and Im done.

Oooo.... and with a lil keyboard action I can calc the new input against the prev output to get data for profit & loss, and %'s. Nice one.

Expiration date would come in real handy for my application. I want to use ZC as a directory of members. Each member would have a 12 months subscription that would go inactive until renewed.

pixelpadre:

Expiration date would come in real handy for my application. I want to use ZC as a directory of members. Each member would have a 12 months subscription that would go inactive until renewed.

Salemaker could be a friendly work around for the meantine, as it allows you to set discounts (or the absence thereof <Smile>) and start and end date ...just a thot