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I think you're misunderstanding what an off the shelf shopping cart is. It's not just a way of storing the items a user has chosen along with their quantities,
by MattBearman 16y ago
I think you're misunderstanding what an off the shelf shopping cart is. It's not just a way of storing the items a user has chosen along with their quantities, like you say, all that requires is a session array.
It's product management and categorising, product options, coupons and discounts, multiple tax rates, bulk buy discounts, user registration, payment gateway integration, promotions, image galleries, I could go on.
Basically when you buy an off the shelf system like zen cart, you're getting an entire e-commerce site that you just configure and style. And even if it's not a full site, but a PHP library to interface with your own site, it's a lot more than just the action of storing product id's and quantities in a session.
- karlrossmann 16y agowow, thanks Matt. This is the answer i have been waiting for. this is my misunderstanding. i get it now, it's not that a basic shopping cart isn't trivial, it's that it quickly expands to a full time job. thanks for enumerating specifics.
- SabrinaDent 16y agoI would also add that an off the shelf cart system will come with a fully fledge back end. This is nice because you can make use of reusable product options, discounting, automated email receipts, etc. But it's even nicer because you can get admin reporting like month to month sales figures, daily totals, most popular product rankings, and running discount totals. Sure you can track this in Excel but the point is that you don't have to. The ability to update, adjust and refund orders from an interface integrated with the store is nice, too. Absolutely you can roll your own, but unless you have a really defined and limited product range it's just likely your needs will scale more quickly than your code, is all.