Simple shopping cart made difficult due to no experience in this field

I am a total newbie to database and shopping carts. I am a web designer, but one of my tasks is to update a shoping cart, with two extra items. I have been informed that this is very simple to achieve, however I am unfamiliar with what they are using, to be honest the site itself sux big time, but nevertheless its a job. The site in question is http://www.gomadonline.com

Please please, if someone is willing to help I can provide you with more details, apparently it can be done very quick, but I just cannot seem to understand how it all works, I have all the ftp details etc..... and understand they have a seperate directory for ssi stuff, obviosuly dealing in credit card transactions.

please help

Trevor Saint

Actually you are asking for quite a bit, unless your intention is to ask for a paid programmer. First of all are you using LAMP (Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP)? If you are, and you are planning on creating an entire shopping cart from scratch which accepts credit cards I suggest you at least take an intro course to MySQL and PHP. You will have to learn how to manipulate PHP sessions, SQL queries, correctly implement SSL encryption, among other things. Perhaps if you focus your question on a smaller aspect of shopping carts we could get you started in the right direction.

Thank you for a reply quantum.

The shopping cart is already there, I need to add an extra two fields. I am unsure what server they are running with, but will find out. Updating the form is not a problem, but the validation is done using this web bots I think. I have the ftp details but to be honest it looks a right mess.

In updating the form I am guessing that I need to add the form validation check, but also update the database alongside, ahhh what am I to do? If you can spare the time I would love to learn more from you about this.

Let's start off with the backend database first, are they running MySQL? If so, do you know how to access the table within the MySQL database and add the two extra fields you need manually? Or alternatively, are you planning on the table being created when the FORM is submitted, so you need to know how to add fields on the fly?

Ok, I found your companies shopping cart - it's not that pretty, but it works - even has SSL encryption. I have a new question. Are you working on a development server or a production server? What I mean by production server is the actual server that the rest of the world sees versus a development server that is internal to the company and can be used to debug and troubleshoot code changes before the code is uploaded to the production server? I don't want to be responsible for any lost sales if you are altering code on the production server and something doesn't work quite right in the beginning.

Remember my comment about correctly implementing SSL encryption? Well your webpage has (in my view) a slight problem. Your site has a link to:

https://vault1.secured-url.com/gomad/form_gomad.htm

Which takes the user to an SSL encrypted page - denoted by the little yellow lock icon in the bottom right of the page. However if someone browses to:

http://vault1.secured-url.com/gomad/form_gomad.htm

(notice the http <not> https) They get the same page without the encryption and when submitted, all the form data will be sent through the internet in plaintext! It took me a while to figure it out on my site, but I added a Javascript location.href check at the beginning of my html script. If the URL displayed in the address bar <does not> start with https then the user is redirected to the same site with the URL name beginning with https.

Now the 2 fields you want to add, are they more user information that needs to be validated or is it 2 new products you want the user to be able to purchase. Also, your form posts to a Microsoft ASP (Active Server Page) script, which is not supported here. I was expecting PHP and MySQL questions, but I suggest you post your question in Client Side Things for Javascript help. Do you have a good HTML editor? Sometimes it makes the code less daughting when Javascript, FORMs, and HTML are color coded differently. I have no experience with BOTs and I have no idea what they are accomplishing in your script.

Well its not our company thank god. When you say development server and production server, I am a little confused. I was actually informed that the process would be easy, and after reading your input I am a little worried about it.

In terms of the update, yes the two fields I believe is one for an extra book with some information, and the other is a credit card date i think for master card. I am not a html guru I design using dreamweaver MX, I am more of a designer than a programmer, but can adjust HTML code to my liking, and have a good understanding of the tags etc. I think bots are something to do with front page, as I looked at the code in source view and it states frontpage 5.0., It would appear I am at a dead end with all of this

A production server holds all the webpages that visitors see when they visit your website on the internet. The production server handles all the abuse anyone can throw at it on the internet. It is your (well, not in this case) company's internet presence. A development server is a fully functioning server that is behind your company's firewall. Only those internal to the company can access webpages on the development server (also kown as intr'A'net) - so if the pages render incorrectly or have bad links or faulty coding, no one outside the company sees this and you are not embarrased. Usually the website is developed inside the company on the development server and when it is completely debugged it is moved to the production server where all your coding effort is exposed to the internet.

You mentioned having FTP access to their production webserver, which means as soon as you upload a file to it, that becomes the page all users will see on the internet. If their are any errors due to your changes, and 50 people come by trying to purchase 2 books each, at 10 US Dollars a book, your company just lost $1000. Before you begin I STRONGLY suggest you download a copy of their entire website (or at least the page(s) you are gonig to change. If your changes aren't working simply upload the original file(s) and no harm will be done.

Now, with that in mind, let's see what we can do. First we will add a new book to the list of things that can be purchased. I am also using Macromedia Dreamweaver so we should be able to do this by line number. We will add the new (make believe) book at the end of your list of books for purchase. Insert this code at line 759:

<tr>
<td width="124" height="22">&nbsp; </td>
<td width="192" height="22">
<p style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"> <left> <font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="1">Learn Javascript, PHP and MySQL</font></left>
</td>
<td width="33" align="center" height="22">&nbsp; </td>
<td width="97" align="center" height="22"> <left>
<input type="checkbox" name="How_To_Code" value="Buy">
</left></td>
<td width="50" height="22" align="left">&nbsp; </td>
<td width="107" height="22" align="left"> <font color="#000000" face="Verdana" size="1">£4.99</font></td>
<td width="135" height="22">
<p align="center"> <left><font face="Verdana">
<input type="text" name="pro11" size="4">
</font></left>
</td>
</tr>

I simply copied the previous table row and renamed the book to "Learn Javascript, PHP and MySQL" and renamed the input checkbox name to "How_To_Code" and renamed the input text box name to "pro11". Therefor, if someone chooses this item and submits the form, the variable "How_To_Code" will be posted to the server with value "Buy", also the variable "Pro11" will be posted to the server with a value equal to whatever the user entered as a quantity to purchase.

This is all very nice, but now the new values have been posted to the server, but they do not exist in the database so they cannot be added into the database yet. This is the job of the ASP (Active Server Page) and this is where you need to know how to program in VBScript (Visual Basic Script) which as I mentioned is not supported here. And without the ASP backend you will not be able to tell when the user wants to purchase the newly added book because it cannot be added to the shopping cart database without that ASP script doing it.

By the way, your form validation is done by the Javascript code between the [script][/script] tags. Do you have a working knowledge of Javascript? Because you are going to have to add some Javascript code in order to validate the Mastercard information. For the most part it should be as simple as a cut and paste followed by changing the appropriate variable names, but Javascript will appear almost incomprehensible if you have no programming experience with it. Do you have a deadline to get this working? I admire perserverance but I get the feeling this may be too much for your first programming experience and your design skills could be better utilized on a different project while you get develop a working knowledge of Javascript, Active Server Pages, and whatever database software this company is using - probably Microsoft Access or MicrosoftSQLServer if they are running ASP scripts.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to explain the problems, and areas of concern. I am gussing this task is going to be far to hard for me to work with.

I do want to create something dynamic just so I can start to work with it. I have installed php and also mySQL, I am all ready to go. How do I begin, from a total beginner, I just want something simple, something I can build and experiment with, how did you start out?

I am eagar to learn, but really need the proper guidance. Is there anything I can do quickly to see some results. I do have my own domain and of course my hosting covers all elements, it is an apache server and supports php and mysql. Any inspiration tips.

I think maybe you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. The script that the form info is sent to is named 'sendmail.asp', which would lead one to believe that the info is simply emailed to someone for processing? If that's the case(which is a bad idea, unless the email body is encrypted), it should be pretty easy to add two more items.

Brut do you have MSN, I could really use your knowledge to get this sorted

Brut, what they have done is this. They have in their FTP, a directory called gomadonline.com, and a second directory called ssi folder gomad, in the ssi folder is the sendmail script you were talking about. and in the gomadonline.com directory is the initial page you view. Can you expand more on this, as the company expects you to know everything if you follow . Cheers

Nope. No msn.
If you have access to the code of sendmail.asp post it or email it or whatever, and I'll try to help yu out.

Ok Brut its been sent via email, could you explain the process as I thought it was done via php and a database, mmm why have they done this and what exactly is going on with it?

cheers Trev