ShopSite Forums

All -

I'm trying to use the Order API to produce output from ShopSite that will
work with my client's order management system. The client uses Mail Order
Manager (M.O.M.).

The biggest problem I have identified so far is that SS uses only one
field
for the customer name, and M.O.M. uses two. Parsing using spaces won't
work
when a customer's name is, for example, Dick Van Dyke.

The other difficulty is that M.O.M. represents countries as lists of
numbers, but SS uses two letter country codes.

Has anyone out there been able to get around these issues? I'd really
appreciate some help.

- Allen

The biggest problem I have identified so far is that SS uses only one
field
for the customer name, and M.O.M. uses two. Parsing using spaces won't
work
when a customer's name is, for example, Dick Van Dyke.

The other difficulty is that M.O.M. represents countries as lists of
numbers, but SS uses two letter country codes.

$name = <shopsite name field>;
($first, $last1, $last2, $last3) = split (/\s+/,$name);
$last = $last1;
if ($last2 ne "") {$last .= " " . $last2;}
if ($last3 ne "") {$last .= " " . $last3;}

All -

The biggest problem I have identified so far is that SS uses only one field
for the customer name, and M.O.M. uses two. Parsing using spaces won't work
when a customer's name is, for example, Dick Van Dyke.

The other difficulty is that M.O.M. represents countries as lists of
numbers, but SS uses two letter country codes.

Allen Murdock wrote:
All -

The biggest problem I have identified so far is that SS uses only one field
for the customer name, and M.O.M. uses two. Parsing using spaces won't work
when a customer's name is, for example, Dick Van Dyke.


You are not going to find a reliable algorithm for this one. All you can do
is establish a rule and use it. But it *will* result in the name getting
split wrong sometimes. Consider these names:

Mary Ann Jones, she considers her *first* name to be "Mary Ann". Her middle
name is Elizabeth.

Your example, Dick van Dyke, is a two word *last* name. There are also
three word last names such as "van der Meer".

Some people have many names, in some countries is not unusual for a person
to have from four to eight names.

The other difficulty is that M.O.M. represents countries as lists of
numbers, but SS uses two letter country codes.


I'm betting that M.O.M. uses the ISO numeric country codes where ShopSite
uses the ISO alphabetic country codes. This is a simple hash array lookup.
You just need the mapping between the two and you're all set. This is not a
hack but rather is the proper way to do this.

Dan