Charon Cart Version 2 Tutorial

Adding to the Cart From a Form

When adding to the cart from a form the process is slightly different, here the selection and processing pages are combined, but the same components still exist, there is still a recordset that filters your product database to ONE item and there is still a dialogue for matching up your product properties to those of the cart.

The first step is to produce the form that will enable users to select the item they wish to add to their Cart. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to use a Dynamic List/ Menu that is bound to a recordset that contains all the products you wish to offer for selection. Create a recordset from your product database that contains at least two columns, a useful name for the product that the user will see and its corresponding unique identifier that will be passed by the form. As stressed previously without this unique identifier there is no way for the Charon Cart code to identify which product is to be added to the Cart. Once you have created the recordset insert a new form onto your page and add a button to submit the form, a list/menu for you to bind to the recordset and perhaps a field to enter the required quantity or colour or any of the other cart columns that you specified right at the beginning when you first added the Charon Cart server behaviour.

Remember that if the value for a cart column that you have added does not exist in the database record for each item you must include an input for its value on the form or there will be no value available to add to the cart for that column as it exists nowhere else.

When the form is laid out as you wish it is time to bind the list/menu form element to the recordset you have produced so that at run-time the list/menu will contain all the items within your recordset. To do this simple go to the server behaviours tab and click the + button then select dynamic elements > Dynamic List/Menu.

That will open up the dialogue box shown below where you select the recordset from which to get the details to populate the list/menu in the Menu box and columns to use as the labels (what the user sees) and the Values (what the form passes to the Charon Cart script). On our example form there is only one list/menu and unless you have renamed it, it will have the default name of select and be located within form1. The labels are the useful product names mentioned above and the values are the contents of the unique identifying columns. The Select Value Equal To enables you to select which item should be initially shown in the list/menu. Enter a value equal to the menu item's value in the Select Value Equal To box. You can enter a static value or you can specify a dynamic one by clicking the lightning bolt icon beside the box and selecting a dynamic value from the list of data sources. In either case, the value you specify should match one of the menu item values. If you leave the Select Value Equal To box blank the list/menu will simply show the first item of the recordset through to the last in the order that the recordset dictates.

The next step once again is to create a filtered recordset that only contains one product or item as below. In this case as we are using a form and not a querystring (link) to pass on the chosen products unique ID we select Form Variable from the Filter Dropdown as shown then type in the NAME of the field that will contain the unique identifier. In our example this will correspond to the NAME of the dynamic list/menu item we placed in our form; 'select'.

Now we have a recordset that filters your product database to ONE item using the contents of the form generated above. When this page is first viewed this recordset will be empty as the form will not yet have been submitted, but that is correct and nothing to worry about.

Finally we must include the Charon Cart server behaviour Add To Cart From Form. Click on Add To Cart From Form to open up the following dialogue box.

This is similar to the Add To Form From Link dialogue shown in the previous section but with the addition of two important elements. Firstly it asks you to select the form that contains the item selections (in our example there is only one form) and secondly it asks you to identify the recordset that is to be used to populate the cart if you request that a record set column be used. Note that on this page, in contrast to the Add To Cart From Link page, you may well have more than one recordset created. Ensure that the recordset you select here corresponds to the FILTERED RECORDSET that contains only ONE item selected by the contents of the submitted form. The rest of the dialogue is filled in in exactly the same was as for the Add To Cart From Link dialogue. Click ok to close the dialogue box and upload the page for testing.

By adding the Add To Cart From Form behaviour code is placed on your page that enables the cart to trap the contents of the form as it is submitted back to itself and ass that content to the cart and then redirect the page onwards. That is the reason that only one page is required for both the selection and the adding process. The page is aware of whether the submit button has been pressed or not.

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