[thelist] Re: Which way is best? (was: Homemade Shopping Cart )

[Rob Smith]

I think I've found a solution to my problem, which is a happy medium to my
which way is best shopping cart. It involves a temporary table and no
cookies nor session variables.

Legend to ASCII Art
[ ] - checkbox
[*] - checked checkbox
[X] - grayed out / disabled product 

I have a short list of unique products:
3245	Letter A	$0.99	[ ]
2487	Letter B	$1.25	[ ]
8437	Letter C	$0.50	[ ]
3493	Letter D	$3.99	[ ]

Then a users "reserves" a few items:

3245	Letter A	$0.99	[ ]
2487	Letter B	$1.25	[*]
8437	Letter C	$0.50	[*]
3493	Letter D	$3.99	[ ]
				[Add]

At this point, when the user clicks [Add], the items are added to a
temporary table. The a  timestamp is placed on this item as a supplemental
column. Before this same product list is displayed once more, I check the
temporary table for "expired" products. (I've enabled a 15-minute
expiration.) If a product has not been purchased before the expired time,
then the product is made available once again:

"Reserved Product":
3245	Letter A	$0.99	[ ]
2487	Letter B	$1.25	[X] (timestamp :: 3:50pm)
8437	Letter C	$0.50	[X] (timestamp :: 3:40pm)
3493	Letter D	$3.99	[ ]

Time is now 4:03pm and no items purchased:
3245	Letter A	$0.99	[ ]
2487	Letter B	$1.25	[X] (timestamp :: 3:50pm)
8437	Letter C	$0.50	[ ] <-- expired and becomes available
3493	Letter D	$3.99	[ ]

Like I said before, the items are removed from my temporary table if they
have expired, BEFORE the list is displayed. I achieved the 15-minute
expiration time by doing:

DELETE FROM myLetters Where EnteredTime < '" & DateAdd("n", -15, now()) & "'

' which is pretty darn cool.

I choose this approach, because of the idea that an order could have been
abandoned mid-way through and the actual real data would not be effected. I
choose not to go with cookies because they can be deleted rather easily and
will eventually expire, either with your set date, or the computers die. :-\
Session variables also have that annoying 20-minute default expiration time.
However, my experience with doing Session.timeout = 90, still isn't
effective. They still expire. At least with a temporary table, the
information is somewhat temporarily permanent :-\ and I have greater control
over what goes and what doesn't. Call it a power trip.

The overhead involved with this approach is when the user actually goes
through with the order, all I have to do is update the availability on the
actual data from the temp table, which can be done in one move.

Your thoughts? warnings? 

Rob.Smith