Multiple shipping options together with different product types and free delivery opt

I need to think ahead as client will be eventually wanting international shipping and currently she wants the following:

(Im assumning its best to keep it on the checkout.php page since this handles shipping address details and looks neater altogether)

1. royal mail special delivery which I charge £7.00 for (its insured)
2. signed for option at £4.00 (its not insured)
3. free delivery if collecting from the shop
(also gift vouchers have a shipping of 99pence / all other products have a shipping of either the above 1 or 2) but both regular products and gift vouchers can obviously be picked up from shop.

in my products database, I am storing either a 1 or 0 for the shipping (1 = regular products / 0 being gift vouchers).

then on my checkout page I would have a radio form for the above free options (£7, £4 or shop collection).

On my cart.php page Im assumning to set session variables to store either the product shipping (either 1 or 0) and on the checkout page for the radio form I would set session variables to store either. £7, £4 or free collection).

Im assumning this approach makes sense in my mind, but wanted to get some feedback on it (obviously currently its not working) and I am a bit stumped to what shipping calcualtions I should use in ecart object.

(currently I have a previous working system where the ecart shipping rules allow for dectection for a product to be either a regular product (£7 default shipping) and a gift voucher (99pence shipping) and i got a checkbox that allows a sessions to be stored to calculate free shipping if customer choses to collect from shop. (but this approach needs to be modifed due to client wanting the customer to have a third choice (the newly included £4 shipping option as stated at the beginning).

Please, could I get some advice on how to best tackle this from my lengthly description (Im known to ramble on) :)

Chris

  (currently I have a previous working system where the ecart shipping rules allow for dectection for a product to be either a regular product (£7 default shipping) and a gift voucher (99pence shipping) and i got a checkbox that allows a sessions to be stored to calculate free shipping if customer choses to collect from shop. (but this approach needs to be modifed due to client wanting the customer to have a third choice (the newly included £4 shipping option as stated at the beginning).  

ok, so how is the current rule configured, if you provide details on how it is currently set up, i can give you details to modify it.

Hi Jason, thanks, ok here is all the detail..

in the ecart object:

1. I have a "ShippingCost" name in COLUMNS (Unique and set as currency)

2. in the ecart Shipping TAB - I have 2 rules set up:

a) Shipping Standard
If Session variable Collection !=1
AND Number of items with ShippingCost of 0 > 0
Create flat rate shippong of $7

b) Shipping GiftCard
IF Session variable Collection != 1
AND Number of items with ShippingCost of 0 <1
Create flat rate shipping of $0.99

3. Currently in my database under products table Im using a table to hold an Int value of 1 or 0 (0 being a regular product and 1 being a voucher)/ so using this.

I think its still safe to say I can still hold the "shipping type of if either a regular product or a voucher" in my products table. but then have a seperate table to store current shipping costs, currently either a £7 or £4 but need them to be stored in a databse so admin can come along and alter their shipping cost if they need) plus the third option would be pickup from shop but then that wouldnt need to be stored in DB. (im waffling again arnt I)

I just need th ebest approach so that if the client decides to add international shipping that I wouldnt have to start from scratch but to just amend slightly)

best regards Chris

you have another issue for paypal, that i will need to investigate in a connect session, I will look at this one at the same time.

Hi Jason, well I have been going around in circles with that last issue working..with no success: heres the run down:

(on both my main products page and voucher page I altered the code for:

$ATC_itemShippingType = "".$row_ItemDetail['ProductShippingType'] ."";// column binding

(from the previous floatval code)

when I go to the confirm page (before it loads up) i get the error : Unknown column 'Standard' in 'field list'

so now im lost.

I must be going about it all wrong.

as currently to recap my coding:

I have a dedicated gift voucher page that passes in the data from the recordset (Where ProductID = 52) (this is also odd as I had altered the code to do a better Where clause but it doesnt seem to save it so goes back to original recordset where clause).

..but for testing purposes for now it it seems to grab the data. so when I add to cart I wanted the ecart shipping rule to do a comparison to see if "ProductShippingType = voucher (this value is stored in the products record). and if its true then the shipping is set to 99p.

however IF a "standard" product is also added to the cart (standard is a different value stored in the same field in my products table under ProductShippingType) then when the customer gets to the Checkout page then they have the choice to select a radio button to select the new shipping cost which values are pulled from a recordset and stored as a session variable - so this then gets checked in the ecart shipping rules.

the main principle for the above is that the customer doesnt pay 99p + regular shipping cost if they purchase different products. they only pay 99p IF they only buy vouchers. bt then the cost of the main shipping costs are all stored in a database so client can change the values at will.

I feel I need to start from scratch. but hoping im just missing a small bit of logic somewhere.

Chris

message me through skype when you see we are both online, i'll need to investigate the code to find the problem.

thanks Jason, Im having to work until 10pm (UK time tonight) so maybe too late for you. But the help would be appriciated as this project has gone on far too long now (client keeps changes things) and so im no longer making any money from it so just want to get it finished :( SO this is the last biggy issue I have right now. once this is resolved then at least the whole website is functioning perfectly to client specs.


best regards


Chris

Hi Jason further to you helping me on skype and me doing many different tests on the code I have come to one situation I would love to resolve :).

I am attaching all necessary files in questions...but I am thinking that you would like need to view the fecart file with the shipping rules since I think its my rule list that is causing me headaches...

Everything seems to be working fine, except the following....

if the session variable "StandardDelivery" is set (this is the one on the giftvoucher page) then the shipping cost is 0.99 however when then customer gets to the checkout page they have 3 additional options for delivery...what I would like is if the customer selects "I wish to collect from shop" on the checkout page then the delivery is free. (I thought I has this set up in my shipping rules in ecart, but i am wrong since it dont work.

what rule would I need to apply in the ecart shipping rules section to make this work?

I just dont know how to get it work work in the way i described above..

Chris

So, if they select the "I wish to collect from shop" option on the checkout pages, this sets the session variable "Delivery" to a value of "Free"


So in the StandardDelivery shipping rule, add another condition to the trigger:

AND
"Based on session variable Value"
If the Session Variable 'Delivery' is '!=' 'Free'

Shall try that when I'm home tonight. Silly question though..I was just overlooking the code last night and on the checkout page from from zip file I attached last night. In the ecart shipping rules I refer tothe session "Delivery" but on the checkout page I haven't created any sessions named 'Delivery' I only created sessions that are the values of the forms. The code for my form on the checkout page does have the name 'Delivery" so my silly question how does ecart shipping rules think that 'Delivery' is a session when I haven't created this session name? Am I going blind or just stupid ;)