How difficult is it do code this???

yehyoh

Hi forum,
I am completely new to PHP, and have HTML experience only, and I have a website design that needs sort of a custom "add to cart" functionality.

While browsing products, user can save to cart, and then go to cart page, and submit list as an e-mail to company for ordering. Thant's it!

Is PHP work really that hard to learn?? Could someone like me code this kind of functionality and make it work??

I could use any advice possible, as I just don't know if this is a complicated kind of project, or relatively simple one. Thanks!

Dia_NL

Do you have previous coding experience beyond HTML?

yehyoh

Originally posted by Dia:NL
Do you have previous coding experience beyond HTML?

No, as I said, I am pretty good with HTML, but that's where it stops

AstroTeg

Are you going to be taking credit card numbers? I see you plan to email the list of products back to the company. Do NOT email credit card numbers (please think about how you'd like your credit card handled).

If you have a lot of time on your hands, this is definitely do-able. Although I think its fair to say everyone writes funky and buggy code when they first start out. I don't think you'd want your first program to be a shopping cart. I might almost recommend building all the cart components seperately for a different app (or build a cart for a test/demo/personal site for giggles). Figure out the hurdles involved. Then when you have it complete, do a rewrite and think about what worked in the first version and what didn't. Seems kind of extreme, but since a cart HAS to work 100% perfectly on the first day, I don't know if you'd want to risk (or afford) having funky/buggy code for something as high profile as a cart (if it was a forum, guestbook, or something else, then yeah, make it your first project and have fun with it).

You do have alternatives like osCommerce or ZenCart. Although trying to tweak the code may be difficult (they're pretty complex), you would have a working shopping cart right out of the box with some really nice features.

yehyoh

Originally posted by AstroTeg
Are you going to be taking credit card numbers? I see you plan to email the list of products back to the company. Do NOT email credit card numbers (please think about how you'd like your credit card handled).

If you have a lot of time on your hands, this is definitely do-able. Although I think its fair to say everyone writes funky and buggy code when they first start out. I don't think you'd want your first program to be a shopping cart. I might almost recommend building all the cart components seperately for a different app (or build a cart for a test/demo/personal site for giggles). Figure out the hurdles involved. Then when you have it complete, do a rewrite and think about what worked in the first version and what didn't. Seems kind of extreme, but since a cart HAS to work 100% perfectly on the first day, I don't know if you'd want to risk (or afford) having funky/buggy code for something as high profile as a cart (if it was a forum, guestbook, or something else, then yeah, make it your first project and have fun with it).

You do have alternatives like osCommerce or ZenCart. Although trying to tweak the code may be difficult (they're pretty complex), you would have a working shopping cart right out of the box with some really nice features.

Thanks astroteg,

It's really simple actually. There is no purchase process at all. No credit card. It's just a feature where someone can save their favorites while browsing products, and then edit or submit that list through e-mail to get free samples of these products. The product pages will be hard coded, they don't have to be dynamically generated.

Could I use one of these products and customize it just to do this?? Or is that too advanced for someone like me??

Thanks!

AstroTeg

Ok, in that case, its not quite a shopping cart (you don't have to worry about transactions, money changing hands, security, etc).

I'd say give it a whirl. Its unlikely you'll find a cart that specifically will do what you're looking for. But to code your own would be a great project. You'll get into managing user accounts and storing session data and such. In theory, even if a user doesn't email you their list, you could still produce reports for the company showing which products made it into a "cart" regardless if the user had them emailed or not.

yehyoh

Originally posted by AstroTeg
Ok, in that case, its not quite a shopping cart (you don't have to worry about transactions, money changing hands, security, etc).

I'd say give it a whirl. Its unlikely you'll find a cart that specifically will do what you're looking for. But to code your own would be a great project. You'll get into managing user accounts and storing session data and such. In theory, even if a user doesn't email you their list, you could still produce reports for the company showing which products made it into a "cart" regardless if the user had them emailed or not.

Ok, sounds great, but I've never coded PHP before. Where do you suggest I begin?? Thanks.

gufmn

Here is a tutorial on a very simple "shopping cart" system that doesn't actually do anything with the results. It just keeps track of what the user has selected. You could easily capture the information and mail() it. Sounds like what you were looking for.

yehyoh

Originally posted by gufmn
Here is a tutorial on a very simple "shopping cart" system that doesn't actually do anything with the results. It just keeps track of what the user has selected. You could easily capture the information and mail() it. Sounds like what you were looking for.

Hey thank you very much for this. I'll check it out!