question about cart info handling

AndreF

whatever users choose on my cart to buy and all necessary info will be stored in array-format session. Then if they are logged in they will be redirected to payment page or if not logged in they will be redirected to create account form the after login they will continue.

but in admin area admin can set to "Require Admin Aprroval" and s/he can approve after 2 3 days when the session where cart info is stored in is no longer available.

I was thinking to base64_encode(serialize(session_thing)) the session and save it in a separate table. then upon each login the code will check if there is any of this sort of data is stored for that logged in users, if yes it will read the info and generate the invoice and save the order info record and delete that data from the table that it won't be re-generated upon next login.

what do you think about the method above?
Is there any better way to handle this sort of issues? any advice?

AndreF

any advice yet please?

bradgrafelman

Well, you could either serialize the array, or just create two tables, one that contains general order info and assigns an orderID to the transaction (unique auto_increment field, for example). Then, in a separate table, you'd insert one row per item in their cart, each row having an "orderID" column that would tie all of them to the row you inserted in the first table.

Then, when it came time to process the order, it'd be a simple JOIN in SQL to retrieve all rows from the table containing individual items that match the given orderID.

AndreF

As I don't want to create an order thing before admin approve the account, how about to create a separate table for cart and cart_info, that admin can see its info when he is going to approve/decline the user account and the order (cart info). and when approved that cart info will be fetched from db and inserted to order and invoice tables to create order and invoice and delete the info from cart table?

AndreF

any advice yet please?