Can I customize checkout flow?

[greggbanse]

I have a client that uses dealers. They'd like to offer retail sales on their website but credit the closest dealer with the sale if the ship to address is within a 15 mile radius of a dealer. Essentially I think I need a zip code database, some PHP code to do the checking and then some logic to either let the sale proceed normally or to interject a page/include that gives the customer an option to either have the product shipped to them (with shipping charge) or indicate that they want to pick it up at the dealer's store (no shipping charge).

Has anyone done this before? With raw PHP it's not that hard to write but I haven't tried working with ShopSite's databases and checkout flow and I'm wondering if I can make this work.

Any insight would be helpful. THanks.

[loren_d_c]

You can't interject PHP into the ShopSite ordering process, but you could create a custom shipping module for the Custom Shipping Add-on api available in ShopSite Pro, to offer an additional local pick-up option for customers if they have certain zips, see the documentation and specification for this API starting at:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/9.0/en-US/sc/pro/shipping.api.html

-Loren

[greggbanse]

Thanks for the reply Loren.

Re: CGI add on - so we're talking PERL. But my app could make calls to the database and show different shipping options based on whatever my app decides? Could my app choose different templates to send the user to next? What if I want to force the customer to pick up at the dealer? Can I simply skip the shipping option and present the user with a note telling where to pick their order up at?

I apologize for my fumbling questions. Without benefit of much experience on ShopSite or an install to test/play with I am limited by what I can remember of how it functions.

[loren_d_c]

CGI is not just Perl, if you have the CLI version of PHP installed, then a PHP script can also be executed as a commandline application. Try searching this forum for search terms such as 'PHP custom shipping', I believe some folks have posted some examples in the past.

All this add-on can do is send shipping options and their prices back to the shopping cart to be displayed with the other shipping options. I cannot add different screens or templates or change the checkout flow. You could put the address of the store in the shipping option name, though, i.e. pass back an option named 'pick up at retail location: 123 Sesame Street, Hollywood CA 90210' and a price of $0.00 (assuming you want local pick-up to be free).

-Loren

[greggbanse]

THanks again Loren, you've been most helpful. I'll run off to track down those threads.