hi cartthrob,
after reading this article and this on cookies, I really think that cartthrob could benefit of this kind of behaviour.
my personal experience with cartthrob shows that cookies are generally deleted a little too soon!
is there any docs on when and how exactely cookies are handeled, because the settings are rarely respected.

and when I come to think of all this: a whishlist function would be nice too!

cheers
stefan

For cartthrob for EE 2, we’re making it possible to save carts to the DB. Currently we don’t store cart data in anything other than the session… which can be configured to expire whenever, but generally the browser will be closed at some point… losing the cart data. Repeat: we don’t save anything in the cookie at all. Cart loss is currently solely down to session timeout, which can be adjusted in the settings. After we get the DB system implemented, long term storage and reactivation will be better all around.

and when I come to think of all this: a whishlist function would be nice too!

We have an add-on module that we’ll eventually sell that handles wishlists. If you’d like to test it, please let me know.

I am currently working on something that makes the cart persistant: https://github.com/paales/ho_cartthrob_savedcart.ee_addon

Cool.

Note: CartThrob 2 will be able to save carts in the DB.

Chris Newton - 04 January 2011 01:52 PM

Cool.

Note: CartThrob 2 will be able to save carts in the DB.

oh - I haven’t even seen the answers till now!
well - hopefully CT2 will be ready soon (I mean ready to upgrade…)

cheers
stefan

CT2 Has persistent carts stored in the database. Right now I don’t know how much YOU can do with them, but WE currently use them. For instance, it’s made it easier / more secure when I pass off transactions to an offsite payment gateway and want to pick back up where I left off later.

Chris Newton - 05 April 2011 11:53 AM

CT2 Has persistent carts stored in the database.

Hi Chris,

Any chance of this feature making it to CartThrob 1?

I had a request today asking if a customer could go back and easily complete a transaction they had previously started. Having persistent carts would be a good start to that.

thanks,

Rick

Any chance of this feature making it to CartThrob 1?

No. It’d require a rewrite. Which is what we did….. which became CT2.

I believe H&O may have hacked a DB storage system into CT1 (pretty sure… if I recall), but we don’t have that feature for CT1, and won’t be adding it. CT1 is not dead, we’re still actively developing it, but that particular feature is just too large for us to spend time on right now, or in the near future.

Hello chris,
I am back to this old thread…

so I did an update to CT2 and I was wondering on how I can use a persistent cart?

do I have to change the Session Expire Value?
I remember, that when I did this on the other shop that I have ported to CT2, they had serious performance issues…

How can I store the cart forever?
are there any new tags to achieve this, or what is the best method now?

any help appreciated
cheers
stefan

hi again,

I just try to bump this thread… it’s been 3 days with no answer…

question remains on how to save carts persistently without performance problems? possible, not possible?
wishlist module, available, or not?

Wishlist module. Currently in beta.

Regarding saving carts persistently forever without performance problems.

1. They can be saved forever

2. But not without potential performance problems. Forever’s a long time…. and it depends on how many carts need to be saved.

Basically you can turn off garbage collection in CT which will help performance issues, and will leave carts in the database until you want to delete them. At that point you’d just need to expand the session / cookie length. If you do this it would be smart to get an extension set up to delete a cart when the order’s complete. Me might also need to add something that doesn’t encrypt the cart contents. I think CT encrypts the cart data by default that’s stored in the DB… for a high volume of storage we should probably create a setting that doesn’t encrypt the data.

We’ve done some optimization on how and why our carts are regenerated and stored which has helped performance quite a bit when storing a high volume of carts for a long time. But it would be good to see it in action. None of our clients have ever required permanent carts, so it’s not something we’ve built for specifically but we have at least attempted to support them.