[thelist] php shopping carts

[Dunstan Orchard]

> I have an opportunity to bid on a job with a shopping cart. Since
> I've been learning PHP and really liking it - I'd like to push for
> PHP / mySQL on the job. How easy/difficult is it to set up a fairly
> simple cart system in PHP? I'm sure there are some scripts out there
> too, so if anyone can point me to some reliable stuff that would be
> great. I'm also concerned about security issues and all that, not
> having built a system like that before...

Hey tom,

I'd build your own - it's jolly easy when you sit down and think about what it
is. The only point at which security comes in is when people submit any
payment details... I'd have to let others coment on that side of things.

The basics of shopping carts (as far as I know) are just that you give a user
a unique id (either via a cookie or a session variable) and then each time
they add something to their cart you just add it to the database with their
unique id. Ditto for remove. When they want to display the cart you just
search the db table for all records with their id and display them.

I hunted around for ages for a shopping cart that would suit my purposes, but
when I sat down to work out what they did, it turned out to be very simple
indeed.

Admittadley I've got a question on this list asking for help with my shopping
cart, but we'll ignore that for now! :op

Just think what you want to do, break it down into steps and you'll soon be
well on your way and probably a lot wiser about php. It's a good learning
exercise I think.

cheerio - dunstan

---------------------------
Dorset, England
http://www.1976design.com/
http://www.orchard.it/
http://www.maccaws.org/