[Pdx-pm] Shopping Cart Logic
Carl Scripter
carl at scripter.com
Fri Mar 7 10:53:01 CST 2003
> My problem is when a customer does not check out the records in the
> shopping_cart table get abandoned. I really don't like this idea. I
> could write a cron to delete the records that are x days old, but I am
> wanting something that does not require an outside process. What other
> ways can I keep the database nice and clean?
I would think that most shopping cart websites are best if a customer's
cart contents stay active .. forever. Yes, this creates a bloated
database -- but you can do so much more... Are you implimenting user
sessions? If so, when a session expires, flag the user record as "busy."
This infers that the user has gone away to think about the purchase .. for
however long it takes :) Also, at the next login, you could perform
queries on dated cart items:
"Welcome back, it looks like you had some items in your cart that we no
longer carry .. but CLICK HERE FOR SOMETHING BETTER." I know bad example
-- but you get the idea.
If you are absolutely against stale records in the database, keep all the
cart information in a cookie -- at least there's a /good/ chance the user
sees them again.
I like the first idea -- flag the old contents as old, but still
potentially active. Maybe it's the salesperson in me :)
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