Shopping Cart

[mpociask]

I am trying to create a shopping cart for a website that sells one-of-a-kind jewelry.

I am trying to figure out a way to prevent 2 users simultaniously trying to purchase the same peice of jewelry, ie. if user A logs on and puts a certain peice in their cart, and then user B trys to put that same peice in their cart. Since only one of each peice exists, that can pose a problem.

I created a field in the table called "available" where it is set as 0 if the piece was purchased or put in someones cart. I need away to update that field as 1 if the user closes his/her session. It needs to be able to be full proof, and should not rely on the user pressing "logout" or something, ie, if the browser crashes, I want the peice showing as available. What is the best way to do this?

[Sayian]

Very good question. Im awaiting an answer to see how this could be done as well.

[kakki]

maybe you can add another field in the table, where the time of the last change is saved
and check it before handling other variables ...
like

// are there any entries, which are older than 15 minutes
// in which field is set to unavailable
// yes -> set it to available
// no -> do nothing

// your "normal" code

[darkerstar]

There is a simple way. The answer lies in the shopping policy. You can simply state the policy "Item is not reserved until purchased", in that case you dont have to keep an eye on the stock control. It makes things much easier.

Otherwise you need to have a timeout on the each item, which is a lot of work.

William