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Posted by Nooze Goy on 07/16/07 17:22
Hi, I'm totally noob with php, so please forgive any apparent stupidity.
I'm writing order entry for our local Food Co-op, using php and mysql.
The people who will be using this could be poster children for the
school of computer illiteracy. The main reason this is being written is
that the lady (94 years old) who has been running the order entry
computer for 25 years is getting orders emailed with the orders as
attachments. Despite the fact that we've repeatedly told members to put
their orders in .txt files, some of them just flat don't understand the
difference between a file saved by notepad and a file saved by the
latest and greatest version of M$ Word, or Word Perfect, or OOo Writer,
or whatever... so, every order cycle (four weeks) our dowager Queen gets
at least four or five orders in files she can't open on the Co-op's
computer that we keep at her house. Mind you, if it was me running that
part of it, it would be solved quickly with a response telling the
offenders that their orders were improperly formatted, please call for
help and we'll talk you through saving the order in .txt format...
actually, I already have an order entry program (written in xHarbour)
that they can download and run, that ftp's a formatted order to our
server... but it's "too hard to use"...
Anyway, it seems that they can point and click on a browser page, so
that's where we're headed.
I've got a conversion program to transfer the existing (xBASE) database
including 160 members, 16,000+ items to MySQL database and I've got the
member log-in screen working.
My next step is a simple order-entry screen where they can type in the
item numbers and quantities to order, and we look up the item number and
show the description and price, with subtotal and total, then allow them
to approve their order. (Later we can get into letting them review their
total order, as they might wish [I would, anyway] to be able to just hop
on the web site and add an item or two anytime up until we close the cycle).
So, right now, I've got a brute-force html form with 24 line items,
where they can enter item & quantity up to 24 lines - no lookup or
anything just yet... for processing purposes of even this brute-force
form, it would by easier to deal with if the entry fields were arrays
instead of individually-named... for example item[1], item[2], ...
instead if item1, item2 - but I haven't found a way to do that just yet
- maybe it's not possible?
Anyway, when FINISHED is clicked (to submit the form data), it will ask
PROCESS or ABORT.
PROCESS will process the order, by finding the items and prices and
displaying a pseudo-invoice (item, description, quantity, price,
amount), so they can confirm or abort at that point. Items not found
would go to a lookup (described below) and either find the true item or
remove it from the order.
What I really want, though, is a screen that's at least got a way to
look up an item, although most users are already looking at a 100-page
catalog with the item numbers... and it would be great to have it do a
running total as you enter, i.e., you enter an item "1068" and quantity
"6" and it fills in the description "CLIF Bar, Peanut Butter Crunch" and
price "0.95" and amount "5.70" and you can either go to the next item or
change that item or quantity or click the "FINISHED" button. Oh, and
instead of entering the item NUMBER, you might want to enter TEXT such
as "PEANUT BUTTER" which takes you to a drop-down list of all the items
with "PEANUT BUTTER" in their descriptions. (I've already written a test
screen which lets you type in pretty much anything and shows you a list
of items whose description contains whatever you type, so that's
presumably implementable as a function).
Any suggestions?
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