Question

I am working on an Ubercart 2.0 project for a client. It is for a fabric store. They want the ability for customers to add fractional quantities (or decimal quantity) like 1.75 m. Does anyone have a comprehensive list of code changes that will allow for this functionality?

Answer 1

I think changing ubercart core to achieve what you mean is a bad idea. You are basically dooming yourself not to have the ability to update/upgrade when there are security fixes and probably some other module would assume you are using integer, giving way to difficult-to-track bugs and php exceptions.

I did not make an extensive search as the previous poster, but if I had to implement your need myself, off the top of my head I would:

1. Use centimeters (integer) as logical measurement unit in the back-end.
2. “Mask” the decimal functionality by altering the add_to_cart forms at validation/submit time, for the user input, so that on submit 1,75 m would get converted in 175 cm.
3. Alter the product, catalog and order page templates in order for them to display price information in metres, so that the value 0.05 €/cm (stored in the DB) would be displayed as 5 €/m.

Just my two cents, but consider that ubercart is in active development and – despite the recent exit from release candidate state – it still has plenty of bugs: you really want to be able to update your codebase when fixes come out.

EDIT: just to stress what above: since I wrote this answer less than a week ago, two UC updates have come out, of which one fixing a critical security issue…

Hope this helps!