i have a multi-langauge (4 languages, english, french, german and doutch) product catalog and shopping cart.
every product should have 4 records, one for each language. but in some cases, some products may miss one language record (for example, product 101, this product's record in French is not input into the database yet.)
So if a client use the English product catalog added product 101 to the shopping cart. and then he decides to switch to french language interface, but there is no french record for product 101 yet. he will lose this item in the shopping cart.
how do you handle this issue?
i have three solutions each of them have flaws.
solution 1. When I first add a product to the catalog, even it is in English, it will be added as the records of other languages too. and then I will go to french records, edit that record to french, etc. This way, i forced the system to have all languges records (even some of them declaim to be french could be in english at this moment.). So when client switch languages interface, he will not lose any records. (even some of the records are not in the lanagues it should be.)
solution 2. Don't allow the switch of the language Interface in the shopping process.
solution 3. Allow the switch of the language interface but alert the users to accept the fact if they switch language interface they may loss some of the products in the shopping cart. (due to some products don't have the record in all lanagues yet. even the merchant should do his best to make sure all products in all langauges, but if i don't program to force this rule, there will always be chances that one or two product missing some lanuages records.)
i am sure i am not the only one facing this issue, how do you do it?
