basic question

[steelsmith]

I'm setting up a basic shopping cart / store. I want to be able to have it set up so that each time a product page is accessed, it checks the inventory to see if each product is available - if it is, 'in stock' will be displayed, 'out' if not. I'd also like to be able to update the database immediately after a purchase is made - once the buyer makes it to the 'approved' page, that product's inventory amount will be reduced by 1.
I'm brand new to SQL and PHP, but very determined to set my store up this way - seems by far the better way to go.

Thank you

[[deleted]]

Before you get too far, go to freshmeat.net and search for "PHP shopping cart" ... I returned 9 results just like that, there are more though, I'm sure. You might find that one of these obliviates the need for you to do much custom coding on your own.

[[deleted]]

hehe... but it's fun to write your own scripts! :-)

Seriously though Mike, you might want to check those 'readymade' things out to get more ideas if you still want to do it yourself.

Make sure you have a very good plan before you begin coding, in the case of a shoppingcart you definately need to know what the script should be able to do before you write any code. It's a tedious job, but if you don't do it, you'll just end up writing code, then re-writing the code because you forgot something, then re-writing it again because you hadn't forgotten after all, and by the time you are half-way, you're so bored with re-writing that you stop coding alltogether :-)

So make plan. A good plan.