Vintners.net: Shopping Cart use

I have written a custom shopping cart application especially for wineries. It is intended to be generic enough to suit all the wine shipping needs of any winery, but specific enough to do an excellent job of getting winery shipping info.

The key to the cart is the order.cfg file in your account on the Vintners.Net webserver. This file will be on your account when it is set up for you. It is up to you to put in correct values for your business, eg. your tax rate. You will need to download it, modify, and replace it. This file is "yours" -- it's up to you to maintain it. There are comments explaining each item in the file itself.

On your page:

It's a bit tricky to set up, but not hard. In your HTML, for each item you wish to be purchasable, you add a POST action <FORM ...> directive with a bunch of hidden fields.

Here's a sample:

    <form method="POST" ACTION="http://secure.vintners.net/cgi-bin/order/order.pl">
      <input type="hidden" name="Cmd" value="Product">
      <input type="hidden" name="Product" value="1997 Reserve Chardonnay@$12.99">
      <table border=0>
        <tr>
          <td>Buy <input name="Quantity" size="3" maxlength="3"> bottles</td>
          <td><input type="submit" name="Add" value="Add to cart"></td>
          <td><input type="submit" name="EditCart" value="Review cart"></td>
        </tr>
      </table>
    </form>

And here's what it actually looks like (expect an error if you hit one of these buttons, this is fake):

Line-by-line description:

The <FORM> line can be "GET" or "POST" method, however, we recommend the latter security reasons; all the customer's entered data is included in the URL with "GET" method. The action must be the path in the sample.
The hidden "Cmd" line must be included exactly as shown in the sample. Be careful to match the upper/lower case correctly. This line tells the script what sort of command this is -- we're adding a product to the cart.
The next hidden line is where you include the actual product info. The name will always be "Product", the value will contain the name of your product, followed by an at sign, followed by a dollar sign, and the unit price in dollars and cents.
To handle case discounts, merely insert the case price after a pair of asterisks, between the name and the at sign. You can include the word "case" for clarity, then a dollar sign, and the case price in dollars and cents. For example:
```
<input type="hidden" name="Product" value="1995 Merlot**case $179.95@$18.95">
```
The TABLE, TR and TD directives are standard HTML for layout control. You can change this all you like, or even drop them completely.
The "Quantity" input is where the customer types in the number of bottles they wish to buy. You can change the size and length if you wish.
The "Add" button is required. The name is only used for the button display, thus can be changed. This is what the customer hits to actually add this value to the cart.
The "EditCart" button is optional. This allows the customer to look in the cart if they aren't sure what they have, and to "check out" when they're done.

Variations:

Several of the above on a page will give you a quantity box and buttons for each item. This works well on a wordy page with wine descriptions next to each item.

Alternatively, you can have many of these lines within a single FORM directive. Sample: St. Innocent Winery and click on "How to Order". For this setup, the "Cmd" line is changed to:

    <input type="hidden" name="Cmd" value="form">

and the "Product" lines are:

    <input name="NV Starboard@$30.00" size=3 maxlength=3>

You have multiple Name lines -- they can contain case discounts as do Product lines.
Lastly there need be only a single submit button, of the form:

    <input type="submit" name="Form" value=" Add to Cart ">

The value can be changed, but not the type or name. (The value is the part that is displayed on the webpage.)

If you want to have a full-case-only, simply omit the "@" and following bottle price:

    <input name="2010 Merlot**case 240.00" size=3 maxlength=3>

Misc./Special

I'd highly recommend you visit the sample pages mentioned in the Variations section, and hit the "view", "page source" buttons in your browser. You will be able to see exactly how their shopping pages are implemented.

As this is not a parsed script, you do not need to name your file .shtml.

You won't be able to test this on your local machine as your web browser won't know how to run the script (it runs on the Vintners.Net server). When testing, simply go through the process using your real email address, but for the USPS address, enter "just testing, please ignore" or some such. Use the number "1111-1111-1111-1111" as the visa card number and we'll recognize this is a test request and ignore it.

Note sample above, case discounts are handled by inserting two asterisks after the wine description, followed by the case price including dollar sign. It is optional to follow up with an at-sign then a bottle price. If a case price is included, but no bottle price, it is assumed only full cases can be purchased. There's one little tricky exception to this -- if you wish to allow half case purchases, follow the two asterisks with a caret. Sorry for the silly magic syntax, but that's the way it is.

To include non-bottle items, simply insert an exclamation point between the at-sign and the price. eg.:

<input type="hidden" name="Product" value="T-shirt@!$18.95">

Don't hesitate to email/call if you have problems with it. Contact us.

Page last updated: 12-Dec-2001