Selling Products Not in the Catalog

Hi Everyone,

This is what I'd like to do:

Besides having their own products, my clients also plan to sell products available from a 3rd party. The 3rd party site has about 3,000,000 titles (products) available.

1. For a few select products, we will get the information ahead of time, and put the information into the ZenCart catalog as products. I will use the 3rd party supplied interface to notify them to ship the product after our end-user has made the purchase via ZenCart.

2. We also want our end users to be able to search the 3rd party's database, retrieve a product and add that product to our ZenCart shopping cart without the product being in our ZenCart catalog.

Has this been done before? What is the simplest way to achieve #2 above?

Thank you very much in advance!

TracNez

Shorter/Different Version of my question:

My clients will sell their own products, but they are also selling products available from a 3rd party site.

We want our end users to be able to search the 3rd party's site, retrieve a product and add that product to our ZenCart shopping cart without the product being in our ZenCart catalog.

My first impulse is to have a generic product in the Catalog, and somehow pass along text strings with the info needed for order fulfilment.

What do you all think? Have a better idea or code that already does this?

Thank you very much in advance!

TracNez

I'm looking to do a similar thing. I want to pass info to 2 variable fields in a generic product. I think the issue may be that the info is passed using 'GET" rather then "POST". Does anyone have a suggestion on how this can be accomplished?

Still looking for a solution to this....any one have a suggestion??

splieg:

I'm looking to do a similar thing. I want to pass info to 2 variable fields in a generic product. I think the issue may be that the info is passed using 'GET" rather then "POST". Does anyone have a suggestion on how this can be accomplished?

I think you'll continue to have no response until the exact details of what you're envisioning are explained.

I certainly have no idea what you're after, nor what you've tried to do but found not to be working.

Ok then.........here goes:

I want to have a photogallery and for each picture I'll include a link that has the variable for the picture number and size and I want to pass this to a product url in zen-cart ...... probably a generic "Picture" Product that takes the variables I passed from the Gallery and adds them as it's text field options......like Attribute text fields. This way when I receive the order, it with be for the generic Picture product, but I'll know which picture from the text attributes. Is it possible to pass outside variable to the product URL??

Thanks in advance.

Does anyone know if this is possible?/ I want to pass variables from an outside URL to a text attributes field within a Zen-Cart product. Details below in my last post.

Thanks

I want to pass variables from an outside URL to a text attributes field within a Zen-Cart product.
First off, I am a terrible coder...Now that you know this, I can see that this would depend fully on what and how the info is on the other site as to how simple or difficult this would be to capture, maybe with some JS. One would have to determine first if the information at this other site can be captured and how...then this would predicate how one would begin to use this in ZenCart.

If you can determine if you can capture it and then in what form and post the details of this I am sure that you can obtain assistance in how to use this in Zen Cart. This would have to be a programatic method and not a manual one BTW.

ok....let me break it down a bit. If I have a product like say this one
http://hyperclothing.com/items/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_7&products_id=35

This product has 2 text field as well as other attributes. In passing varibales, typically you add an "&variable_name=value" and so on but for some reason this doesn't seem to work with Zen-Cart. Maybe it's a "POST" vs. "GET" thing.....I'm not aware of the differences either.

For example :

"http://hyperclothing.com/items/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_7&products_id=35&id[txt_3]=Billy" doesn't work.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make this work??

Thanks in advance.

Looked at your site...When I enter a name and a number for this item and add to cart...the text I entered is picked up...

This is not what you have posted as your problem...As Zen Cart is picking up the entered text what is it that you want?

splieg:

Is it possible to pass outside variable to the product URL??
No, passing attributes via $_GET is not supported.

to code changes, you'd likely need to start with altering the shopping_cart class and convert the various $_POST['id'] references to work with your new approach. However, then you run a serious risk of busting all attribute support from within real product pages. There are a ton of additional places where you'll have to alter the code to do this. And agressive bug-testing will be required. This is not a light task.

Might want to look at another approach to accomplishing the same end result.

Are you wanting your customers to be able to go directly to your product_info pages for those products and be able to choose their own attribute choices, or are you attempting to insulate them from that for some reason? If so, why?

Thanks for your replies.

To go back to my post 3 or 4 ago, what I'm actually trying to accomplish is this:

"I want to have a photogallery and for each picture I'll include a link that has the variable for the picture number and size and I want to pass this to a product url in zen-cart ...... probably a generic "Picture" Product that takes the variables I passed from the Gallery and adds them as it's text field options......like Attribute text fields. This way when I receive the order, it with be for the generic Picture product, but I'll know which picture from the text attributes. Is it possible to pass outside variable to the product URL??"

I don't have the gallery and the Zen_cart set up so i posted one of my other projects as an example. But the concept is the same.......it would be like "http://hyperclothing.com/items/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_7&product s_id=35&id[txt_3]=Picture Name&id[txt4]=Picture Size 3"

Of course I know a client can enter these names and numbers in manually but that allows for errors. I also know that I can add the pictures individually as products but for the site that I'm working on it wouldn't be suitable seeing they have thousands and are contantly updating them. Also...they sell many other products that are not pictures so using a shopping cart just for images is also not suitable.

DrByte.....you mention that I might want to look at another approach to accomplishing the same end result......any suggestions to that effect??

So back to my original post on this...How are you going to get this information from the other site?

Post this code here so that others here know what they are dealing with. What the captured information will look like, how captured, and what form it will exist as. Then the Zen people will have something to work with.

You mentioned "a generic picture product" and the desire to use attributes to identify which picture. Later you mentioned 'thousands'.

Do I correctly understand that you plan to sell ONE picture product, with thousands of variations, as well as T-Shirt products, Mugs, Umbrellas, Briefcases, and other various items, requiring perhaps a more traditional layout approach than the single "picture" product?

Is there a particular reason for wanting it to be only a single product, and not thousands of individual products? While the thousands may be similar, each one is different.

Thanks for restating your original post. I had already read it numerous times to try and understand the problem you're trying to solve. However, you have explained things with a particular approach/solution in mind and I'm having trouble dissecting it to its roots in order to suggest alternate approaches. hence the questions...

I believe he wants to use information from the "other" database site to be the source of the product sale in zen cart. Instead of 3 million products setup in zencart he wants to create a product on the fly from the returned information.
ie
Van Gogh
8" * 6"
Pink frame
$200,000.00

Then the generic product in zencart would display the same information, but it would be different for each product returned. It would be like using attributes but you would create (hack) this info on the fly.

You couldn't actually use attributes as they would have to be pre-defined and this would be impossible.

You could try creating a new, unigue (non reusable) product for each item.

But imo it sounds like far too much coding would be required.

Okay. I had missed the "other site" piece, as that was in the original poster's topic before this new discussion, and wasn't reiterated.

nevertheless...

If you can rig a way to send $_POST data instead of $_GET, then using text attributes for your custom description would work.

The easiest way to send $_POST data is to generate a form and a submit button, with hidden fields containing the parameters to be passed.

You've evidently looked at the kinds of field names etc being generated. Simply duplicate the process, but make them hidden instead. Then when the customer clicks the Submit button, it'll take them to the shopping cart with the items inserted already.

Good post DrByte...
But poster correct me if I am wrong.

This other site is not yours and you can not recode it and add this form and submit button... am I correct...???

If so that is why I have asked you to post the code for you to capture this text data from that site...then knowing how this captured data exists help can be applied.

Thanks for your replies. Actually...both sites are mine and with DrByte's suggestion, I included a form with dynamic hidden fields to pass the picture name and price using "Post" to the generic shopping cart item.........so I can now sell the pictures in the shopping cart. Works like a charm.....I'll post the site as an example once I have it all tweaked.

Thanks again.

Sorry,

As both sited are yours you have control over this....and it sounds as though you have a solution....