Trying to make a SIMPLE shopping cart with PHP/html/cookies/javascript.

PissedAtPHP

Hi everybody!

I'm working on building a website to sell my screen printed t-shirts. The homepage will contain a wall of the products in html only, and when a product is selected you go to a deeper description page dedicated to the individual product. That page is going to have options for shirt size/color options, as well as a price. From there I want the user to click an "Add to Cart" button which redirects them to a Cart page that displays the shirt name/size/color/price based on the variables they picked on the previous page. Right now I have this done with php cookies that have successfully saved the variables but they are just each a scattered individual cookie and I don't know how to get them grouped into a single product so it can be previewed by the customer. How do I get those scattered variables to preview like a cart would, displaying the products they have selected with all the options and price that it contains?

Keep in mind that after they pick one item they need to have the option of returning back to the shirts and selecting another shirt, with its own individual options, and then that needs to be somehow added to the cart as well. Once I get that to display I'm also unsure about how I'm going to get the prices for all of the shirts they have in their cart to be added into a total, and how that total will be changed once they select their country for shipping and if they click "remove" on any of the items in the cart.

Once all of this is done the cart total is going to go straight to PayPal (also not sure about how to do that but I assume that will be easily figured out?). And also those cookies for their cart needs to be made into an email receipt that will be sent to me(I know how to send basic php emails, but unsure about how to do so with cookies inside of the email).

I'd also like to mention that I'm not worried about any security risks, I don't plan to sell many shirts, and I won't have many products to sell. So I will be able to make sure payment has been received through paypal before I send out each shirt. And the customers sensitive information will only be obtained by paypal so thats not a problem. There aren't account registering or anything complicated, I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible!!

Sorry I'm kind of scattered right now, here's my basic questions:
1.How can I group all of the cookies I've created for the name/size/color options from the html form and have the Cart page obtain that and display it as a product in their cart? (Thinking possibly an array file but I don't know how to do that.)

2.Once the cart displays all the items they have chosen, how are their products calculated into a total, and how do you calculate their shipping information into that?

3.How do I create a "Remove" option for items they don't want in the cart?

I'm ready to rip out my hair and run through a wall so any help is appreciated! I don't expect you to code the whole thing for me, but if you could type up a quick example for me to understand the basic concepts I should be able to roll with that!

Thanks! 😃

Bonesnap

One thing you're going to want to do is read up on Paypal's site about integration, because they offer several different methods and levels of integration, and depending on what you choose, it will affect your cart system on your website. Paypal also has documentation on how to send things like quantity, price, description, etc.

Also, I assume this website is storing all this product information in a database of some kind?

PissedAtPHP

Thank you, I will look into PayPal's options for integrating.

I don't understand databases, I'm assuming that because I only have a few products I won't need to store them in a database though? I thought databases would only be needed for massive companies with hundreds of products that need to be managed in real time for things like "Out of Stock", which I don't have to worry about. Why would I need a database and is there any more simple way to do this without a database?

Weedpacket

A database is something you store data in so that it is organised and accessible. Once upon a time it was a metal filing cabinet with manilla folders containing sheets of paper, or a document storage box sitting on a shelf above the desk; these days data is more useful if it is stored in a form that computers can use (for example, so that it can be displayed in a web page, or so that you can find out who placed orders); (the Firefox browser has something like half a dozen databases for storing user data).

You might consider looking for an existing shopping cart application and using that, rather than build one from scratch.

NogDog

Weedpacket;11028697 wrote:
...
You might consider looking for an existing shopping cart application and using that, rather than build one from scratch.

If you consider that the objective here is to process transactions involving money, and that screwing up such transactions in any way could prove hazardous to your bank account (not just lost sales, but user billing data security, incorrect billing, not charging relevant taxes, and so forth), this is probably good advice -- and probably an important reason as to why most shopping cart systems are not, in fact, "simple" (where "simple" is quite subjective, mind you).

light4rmup

well, u said u don't want to use databases, the next option that comes to mind is either array or text files but array is more feasible than text file. So assuming we are looking at the option of using array then it has to be a two or multi-dimensinal array,. Continue later.... Got to attend to something.