Custom product flash integration

Hello!
I'm planning on moving to open cart soon. I'm trying to architect a simple, fast, effective way to integrate the flash designer I've been working on, into the site.

My products are very, very customizable. We want to give our customers instant gratification while customizing their orders. So we have started developing flash files for our products that allow users to 'design' their orders.

I need an efficient way to pass this information from flash to open cart. There are WAY too many configurations and options to create attributes for each option, for each product.

What I have started to do in my current cart, is set the path to the product SWF in the description of the product. Then I call that description in my embed code. I've modified the checkout button javascript to grab the variables from flash, set them to a text-input attribute. So my flash might produce a string like "Color: Red, X:10, y:12, name: Jon Doe".

I assume I can get the same hack working within opencart. But the solution just seems 'hackish' to me, though functional.

This brings me to my next problem. I think as a part of my customers experience, they should be allow to 'save' these products, so they can re-purchase them. This adds a new dimension to the project. I will now need flash to read-back the strings it produces. This means I need to add a new table, and view etc. Anyone have experience with extending the database and user tables? Any input and advice would be immensely helpful.

Thanks!

It sounds like you have it under control.
I don't know what you are doing with the flash specifically, & which variables you need to save etc. so I don't know how much help I'd be unless you post some actual code. It sounds like what you are trying to do is not directly related to opencart itself, but is actually part of your product code?

Readyman,

Thanks for the response. I have not yet implemented this into opencart. I'm currently running Pinnacle Cart. And have a proof of concept, however I don't want to link to my site here, for google purposes - And competitors trying to steal my idea.

Our company prints stickers, take Skinit.com for an example. they are in a different industry - But the same concept. Customers can browse our site like a normal shopping cart. However, instead of product images, they are greeted with a flash file. This flash file allows them to arrange and change colors of the decals. I'm working with a development team to actually build the flash designer.

What I am trying to nail down, is the communication with opencart from the flash file. Since all these attributes are being changed, a solid way of receiving the orders so I can then prepare them for print.

The notion of extending the opencart database, derives from the functionality of saving these 'designs' people make. This way I could add social features - Rating peoples designs, the ability to "open" designs back into the flash.

hey,

i am trying something very similar. did you manage to pass the custom variations of your product to the shoppingcart?

greets
mo

I've added dynamic variables to Global mega options & tested them successfully. These can be triggered using the GET, POST, basically any REQUEST method.
So you can get your flash file to post to the product page and all the hidden options will be available to be added to the cart when they click the add to cart button. It's also possible to have your flash file post directly to the cart as well.

With a tiny bit of tweaking in the template file, it's pretty straight forward to also trigger existing options that are visible on the product page with these same REQUEST variables so that you can send a person a link in an email or share it, and they will come to a product page that has all the variables filled out already.

thanks, good to know...

so im trying to code a customizer for clothes. (with javascript)
so i have my main product, with two options: COLOR A and COLOR B

how can i exactly pass these variables (which are already defined in the productmenu)
to the cart without using the productpage?

sry i am beginner/intermediate.

just bought your plugin.

now i want to include it in my product configurator.
is threre a way to hide the options and use my js configurator for the selection and then send the product with the selected option to the cart?

You'll need to send me a static version of your configurator so I can see where the insertion points are.
Basically I work from the principle that if it's already working on it's own, then I just need to port it over.

HEy, i finally managed to get this puppy working.
There are a few things i need to fix though.

In my cart, i want to have an individual image based on my selected options.
How can i achieve this?

As far as is see, the options are written in an array and with foreach they are attached to the products in the cart.
Is it possible to somehow use the variables to trigger my dynamic image creation script?

My Script generates an image with php and i want the selected options passed to the variables "$opt_one" and "$opt_two"
for each product in the cart.
Is there a way to achieve this?

Yes, there is a way. If your script is already performing the functionality you simply have to get the option that you need and feed it into the src variable.

But first i have to translate the variable used by your script into the nummeration used by my image-script.
So that variable "white" stands for 1, and "blue" for 2 for example.

The problem is, that i have two options with similar values that i have to assign to two differnt variables.

I am able to pull of the last variable in the array. But i dont know how to do that individually for every image.
If i try to echo your variable $aoption at the pictute above, it does not work because it istn initiated at this point.
If i copy your code and place it above the img-tag than i am able to echo it. But as i said, i need to translate it first to fit my GET variable.
I want to do this with js: ...and so on.

Sounds like you're double handling your variables and just changing them to numbers and using javascript to do it. Why don't you just make your script understand that white is white and blue is blue and so on. You don't need to add javascript on top of this - am I missing something? Are you doing something extra with ajax, that needs these variables to be updated into javascript as numbers?

yeah, thats kind of noobish

but in german we have a lot of strange characters like ä,ü,ö,ß and so on.
i cant pass the real names of the colors as variables. for that reason i change them into numbers.

furthermore the problem i ran into is, that only gives me the second option-parameter, not the first. besides, i need both individually for each product in the cart.

Try outputting all variables using the print_r function, then you'll be able to see what variables are exposed & ready to use.

Ok, it looks like that
But how do i isolate the different values? im sorry but im not a programmer, im still learning.

Ok, never mind. I got it!

just took the $product['key'] and extracted the option values, passed this values to my script and converted the numbers to the corresponding colors.