Question

I made a system a while back which involves a basic shopping cart. The cart is a very simple OOP system which adds items by 1 quantity at a time. Here is the function for adding an item to the cart.

    function add_item($itemid,$qty=1,$price = FALSE, $info = FALSE)
{ 

    if($this->itemqtys[$itemid] > 0)
            { // the item is already in the cart..
      // so we'll just increase the quantity

        $this->itemqtys[$itemid] = $qty + $this->itemqtys[$itemid];
        $this->_update_total();
    } else {
        $this->items[]=$itemid;
        $this->itemqtys[$itemid] = $qty;
        $this->itemprices[$itemid] = $price;
        $this->iteminfo[$itemid] = $info;
    }
    $this->_update_total();
} 

The problem with this is some of the products have variations (sizes, colours etc..) but when they chose a different variation in the same order, the products are not added correctly – all of the same product falling under one variation.

I thought it would be an idea to use multidimensional arrays, or arrays within arrays, to produce something like:

$this->iteminfo[$itemid][$var];

Getting the var from the product is not a problem, just im struggling with how to add the product to the cart with its variation, and updating the quantity of this product/variation combination only when the variation is added again. If a different variation is added, it would add the product in a new entry in the cart?

Hope this makes sense :/ Thanks

Answer 1

I would suggest using a single dimension(al) array, but rather than filling it with plain old ints and strings, place a object within it. It will be much more robust that way, and you can easily cycle through to get whatever you need – as well as being able to expand the object out further in the future.

Something like this would even work:

class itemToBuy
{
    public $itemID;
    public $qty;
    public $price;
    public $info;
    public $whoKnowsWhat;
}

class yourShoppingCart
{
    function add_item($newItem)
    {
        $itemInserted==false;
        $itemsInCart=count($this->itemqtys);
        for($i=0;$i<$itemsInCart;$i++)
        {
            if($this->itemqtys[$i]->itemID==$newItem->itemID)
            {
                $this->itemqtys[$i]->qty+=$newItem->qty;
                $itemInserted=true;
            }
        }
        if(!itemInserted)
        {
            $this->itemqtys[]=$newItem;
        }
        $this->_update_total();
    } 
}

Then just pass the object instances of itemToBuy rather than the arrays you are passing it at the moment.