Newbie to PHP with big ideas :?

dfaz

Hi Guys,

I have just stumbled upon your site whilst looking for inspiration for a project I am undertaking. I am designing a system for use in my fathers company. My father runs a team of engineers who repair machine, at the moment their repair reports are paper based. My idea is to bring this system on-line, with the following functions:

Spare parts ordering- This will be very similar to a typical on-line ordering site, minus the payment aspect. Orders will get logged on a database and picked up by the warehouse dept. at head office.
An on-line repair form - Filled in by the engineers.
Back-end functionality - i.e. Reports that can be run, site & engineer details etc

The method behind point 2 is the call entre enters the jobs onto the system online, it is saved to a database and then emailed to the engineers' Blackberry, with a job reference. The engineer then goes onto the website, enters the job ref which brings up the details, they then fill in the actions they have taken and when confirmed it updates the record.

How feasible is this? I think the job logging etc is straightforward enough, how hard is the shopping cart to create?

thanks in advance

Dean

The_Chancer

There are various freebie "shopping carts" that can be used, and with no payments, would be very easy and feasible.

dfaz

Thanks chancer thats reassuring to know. Do you know of any good examples?

thanks again

dfaz

Also woud it be possible to include a link in the email that goes to the engineer; so when they click on it it opens up the job information automatically?

thanks

dfaz

Horizon88

It sounds to me like you don't need a shopping cart so much as an order request form. Have the engineer/technician fill out a form that gets mailed to the warehouse, they fill the order from there. Something like:

<form name="orderReq" method="post" action="doMail.php">
Engineer Name: <input type="text" name="engineerName" /><br />
Order Request : <input type="text" name="orderRequest" /><br />
Task ID Num.   : <input type="text" name="taskID" /><br />
<input type="submit" value="Send" />
</form>

Then in doMail.php:

<?PHP
if (empty($_POST['engineerName']) || empty($_POST['orderRequest']) || empty($_POST['taskID'])) {
   header("Location: order_request.html");
   exit;
}
$engineerName = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['engineerName']);
$orderRequest  = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['orderRequest']);
$taskID = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['taskID']);

$warehouseEmail = 'bobby@warehouse.com';
$message = 'Incoming Order from engineer: '.$engineerName.'\n\nRequests '.$orderRequest.' for task number: '.$taskID.'.';
$headers = 'From: no-reply@auto-mailer.com';

if (mail($warehouseEmail, 'New Order Request', $message, $headers)) {
   echo 'Order request mailed successfully.';
}
else {
   echo 'There was an error mailing your request, please try again.';
}

?>

Something along those lines... I'm wicked bored. 🙁

dfaz

hmm thats an idea Horizon, my thinking was they could just select the items from a list, compile a cart that when submited is saved to a database. This database could then be utilised by the warehouse dept. for stock control.

dfaz

Anyone know of any free carts that i can use, then edit to make my own?

thanks

Dean

Horizon88

Check out www.hotscripts.com - they've got a ton of free scripts you can tinker with.

I believe paypal also has an API that ties directly into their systems, but I don't know for sure.

dfaz

Can PHP work ok with MS Access? I have looked into MySQL but it doesn't appear to have a front end that i can use like access does.
or am i way off the mark?

Horizon88

You can use phpMyAdmin to build and layout your SQL tables, if that's what you mean by a front-end. I've never seen anything used with Access from PHP but there's almost definitely a class or function somewhere that does it. I'd recommend using mySQL and phpMyAdmin, but to each his own.