Single Product Purchase on Separate Website

I have another request. It would be helpful if we could set up an order form on a website separate from zencart for an individual product (we don't want to take the customer through the shopping cart registration process for that specific product). We would want them to be able to fill out a form on our website, and then they are added to the database as a customer, and an order is put through for that specific product they filled out the form for. I'm pretty sure nothing like this is available, but if it could be included in a future release (or added as a mod) that would be great!

we don't want to take the customer through the shopping cart registration process for that specific product).

We would want them to be able to fill out a form on our website, and then they are added to the database as a customerHow is this different than the registration process??

If added to the DB, then all the information must be collected.

A form outside of Zen Cart is fully possible and can then be mailed to any address to be processed, and many types or templates for these are available over the web

Or am I not capturing your request

Kobra,

Thanks for the reply. I think you pretty much understand. The reason this is different than the registration process is because we don't want to take them to our shopping cart page at all. We just want a person to see our product, click the order link, fill out one form, and the order is complete. We want to keep the same look of that site (our current order page can be found at this page but still have a different look for our shopping cart site. We will make sure all the necessary information is on that one form, but for that specific product (or actually 2 products), we want to take the order directly from the site we currently have set up.

So if we had a form outside of Zencart, would it be set up so the information is forwarded to the database? Can this easily be done with those templates you were talking about?

The forms that I referenced, will not integrate with Zen Cart, and this is mostly a security issue and sessions control. But using the masterpass mod these could be added manually to the Zen Cart DB and one would use the order mail to process the order.

One could create a php SQL "update" to place these into the DB in the correct tables and this is also outside of Zen Cart but would interface with the same DB...I would also run a test site for this development if you are live.

Kobra,

Thanks for the reply. I have limited programming experience, so I don't really know what you're talking about at the moment, but I will look into some stuff that you said and see what I can do.

kobra:

One could create a php SQL "update" to place these into the DB in the correct tables and this is also outside of Zen Cart but would interface with the same DB...I would also run a test site for this development if you are live.

How is this different from what I was looking to do? Do you know anywhere I could get information on doing this?

Any of the php/mysql sites will provide basic info and then you can look at the create account functions in Zen Cart for the specific DB items and blend them leaving the sessions out. or creating a separate session for this off line entry.

This all assumes that the other web site resides on the same server and your host can guide you in the specifics of access on their system. If it does not, then this is mostly not possible and again is for your protection as you do not want world ability to inject into your mysql DB.

If this were configured to cross servers, Unfortunately, this fact would be noted to the informed, and there are individuals with nothing better to do than attempt to expliot these cracks.

I figured out how to create a form and post the results to the mysql database, so I know that part can be done. Do you have any idea what the next step would be? There are so many files that Zencart uses for the checkout process that I'm confused about what would be necessary for what I'm trying to accomplish.

What is it that Zen Cart should do with the information?

I would like it if the information showed up with all the other orders. I plan to collect all the required information via the form and have that submitted to the database. I assume that once it is in the database, it will show up in the admin (although I haven't confirmed that yet). The things I am not sure of are:

1. Will the order show up in the admin?
2. Is it even possible to create a customer and have their order submitted at the same time. I assume that if I have all the necessary customer information on the form (name, address, etc.) and have code in the form that says the customer is ordering a specific product (by using the product number from the shopping cart) that I can submit all the information to the mysql database and it will be like a person submitting the order from the current shopping cart page, except now it can be done from a page outside the shopping cart, and the process can be done on one screen. Any thoughts?

Zen Cart is not designed to be used as you describe.
Zen Cart collects and processes all information first-hand, and has no facility to handle data injected to it remotely.

However, if you wish to manually generate all the database entries to store all the customer and order data for your customers' purchases, you can remotely insert the records via a custom script you would have to write to do so. Providing you supply complete sets of data, they would then show up in the admin area along with your other orders.
You can find the database structure documented in the wiki under the Developers section.

DrByte:

Zen Cart is not designed to be used as you describe.
Zen Cart collects and processes all information first-hand, and has no facility to handle data injected to it remotely.

However, if you wish to manually generate all the database entries to store all the customer and order data for your customers' purchases, you can remotely insert the records via a custom script you would have to write to do so. Providing you supply complete sets of data, they would then show up in the admin area along with your other orders.
You can find the database structure documented in the wiki under the Developers section.

Thanks doc. I knew the stock zencart can't do what I want, but I am willing to get my hands dirty in a bit of coding (which can be torture for me) to get it done. When you say manually generate all the database entries, do you mean I will have to manually type in every order, or is it possible to create it so that a form I create to post on our website will allow the customer to submit all the necessary information to the database to have the order show up in the admin. I want to try to do this just by php coding a special form, and not making any modifications to the mysql or anything else, but I'm still not sure if it is possible. I obviously don't want to waste my time if it is not possible.