Attributes System

[cyberfolli 0]

Atributes are very import to most products. It might be simpler to associate certain atributes that are created when you create an idividual product. Create them like it is now but assign a piticular group in the product creation section

[♥Hierophant 0]

Atributes are very import to most products. It might be simpler to associate certain atributes that are created when you create an idividual product. Create them like it is now but assign a piticular group in the product creation section

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Actually it already works like this in the MS3 admin control panel, if you have a working snapshot.

[ABROADman 0]

Hey guys, I'm noew to the board. I've been tweaking osCommerce for my customers for about 6 months now and just LOVE it. I ran across a customized installation of osCommerce that i just love. Here it is...

 

Link to AWESOME Attributes feature....

 

They have tiny thumbnails of different attributes (colors in this case) and the large product image changes when you click on the thumbnail. AND the combo box containing the color attribute also changes at the same time! Does anyone know of a contribution that adds a feature like this? I've tried to find one, but haven't had any luck.

 

If anyone has any advice on how to acheive this, let us know!

 

~ Parker Fleming

[slughead 0]

yeah I agree with whoever said "add weight with attributes"

 

a lot of the stuff you can actually live without if you have enough patience, but I have no idea what I'm going to do about this

[erwan 0]

I have my own suggestions

 

1.

it turns out in my case that all products have the same price, and all products have same attributes (picture frame shop)

in fact each picture has 20 attributes

 

could the attribute admin have the possibility to set a default value that would apply to all products if no attribute value is defined for that product ?

 

2.

in the shop, Could the attribute select box apply the total value of the product with that attribute, or calculate the value with a javascript or something like that ?

 

Thanks and keep up the good work.

[jpool 0]

I have to add one tiny thing, sorry if addressed above but the letter now look all the same .

we need to be able to not only control the stock but also to update in a very ordered fashion, this is critical when you have both online and offline shops.

hope it makes sense

 

j.

[Alfredk 0]

Allow for the creation of Attributes or groups which contain many other attributes. I'm in the Jewelry business and it is an obvious problem to create the same attribute over and over again, for example the Attribute "Size" in my business contains at least 18 individual numerical attributes, now I have to select each one individually and with a fair amount of products, that is a real problem.

[Xtreme-Agency 0]

What you need to add to all the above is the following:

 

 

1. A "status" field in order to turn on or off the particular/style attribute.

 

If you have a quantity of 0 for example. you do not want to delete this attribute because you may have ad sales and need to keep the relatioships integrity.

 

 

would help populating as well the tables with all alternatives . we could update the satus field and only show the attributes we want without having to delete them.

 

 

2. a reference field :

 

 

ie a blue short size small has a diferent reference number than a blue short size large and so on.... in that case a reference number at the product level is useless.

 

 

3. a WEIGHT field in order calculate accurately shipping.

 

note: I read all the others posts mentionning contributions. we do NOT want contributions to do such a basic thing. needs to be in the CORE program. and your contributions will not help when they release MS3 with different classes and functions.

 

 

4. a COST field !!!! how many times do you have to tell a developer that you can not know your margin if you do not have a cost field . just beyond me !

 

 

 

A store owner with only common sense

[Xtreme-Agency 0]

the attribute table could as well have a set_order field in order to be able to sort the attributes in any way needed.

 

 

 

this set_order field would have of course to be accessible from the admin in order to modify values if needed

[wylde 0]

I would like the attribute system to be easier and steamlined. So far in your type of system I have seen it painfully slow and not very well done.

 

What I would like is to have Attributes being able to be downloaded to say an excel file and easily managable. I am currently working with a company thats is a database only and doesnt have the html you and The other company that will not be named. He basically had a feature like yours and I made him do it simplier.

 

What I did is made him think and create attributes that were only 3 cells. One cells lets say had colors: Red|Black|White with the | being the seperator. The Next Cell had the name: COLORS and then there was a ON/OFF switch.

 

My site has 1000's of products and 100's of colors and I need a easy way to add the attributes.

[Ian MacMillan 0]

I think that the drop down attributes would be great. I have a shop where I sell model railroading items. I have one product, but many paint schemes on a locomotive or car. An easier attributes feature would be great so I dont have to do hundreds of the options over and over.

[wylde 0]

I recently found a company that is going to fix my problem with attributes and make it able to combine attributes into one cell. They do alot of oscommerce work so contact me if you want an easy way to load data and attributes via easy populate :)

 

My project with them is almost finished and cant wait to see how it works.

 

 

 

 

I would like the attribute system to be easier and steamlined.  So far in your type of system I have seen it painfully slow and not very well done.

 

What I would like is to have Attributes being able to be downloaded to say an excel file and easily managable.  I am currently working with a company thats is a database only and doesnt have the html you and The other company that will not be named.  He basically had a feature like yours and I made him do it simplier.

 

What I did is made him think and create attributes that were only 3 cells.  One cells lets say had colors: Red|Black|White with the | being the seperator.  The Next Cell had the name: COLORS  and then there was a ON/OFF switch.

 

My site has 1000's of products and 100's of colors and I need a easy way to add the attributes.

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[peufeu 0]

You mean, something like that :

 

Example 1

- choose "Avec Cadeaux" (with gifts) and "Lot de 3" (pack of 3)

- look at the cart...

- Of course, each attribute has modifier for weight, price, dimensions, quantity (for packs), products class, image, colour, products model, sort order...

- Attributes can add other products to cart (of course with attributes too) with calculation of the price considering different tax rates to charge more for the products with a lower tax rate

- Only thing missing is the stocks checker.

- Products class is an in-development feature implemented using hidden categories which will allow me to compute a total of products by class and use it to offer rebates and free items (for instance if you order more than X amount of items of class Y, you get a free toothbrush)

 

Try changing the cart quantity.

Don't look at the debug output ;)

Ah, the checkout does not work yet.

 

Other showoff :

Example 2

Choose a colour... look in the cart...

 

Example 3

This one is finished, you can buy ;)

[1Putts 0]

Wasn't sure if this should go here or in the checkout section:

 

It would be very useful to be able to change the product options within the cart after they have been added. Sometime people forget to select the options - then they have to select the checkbox, refresh to remove from cart and go through the whole process again.

 

Also, adding multiple products at once (like in the XSell feature) wouldn't be such an big ordeal.

[snakerboy 0]

Static stuff would be great.

[killer-g 0]

How about grouping Products with the same attribute in the frontend.

 

I had a lifestyle shop as a customer and they wanted to group their products by colour -> e.g. red candles, pillow?s, towels.

 

for something like this you would probably need:

- pictures from Product with option (have a full pic(red candle) assigned to an option and a small thumb(only red colour) )

- and/or something like master products

 

 

More:

-The option selection should definitly go also in the product edit dailog.

- How about a product compare? could be needed if you staticly set options for a product. Have not really needed it yet, but some folks asked for it.

- Options Types are also urgendly needed(checkbox, radio, pic, text,...)

 

@HARALD : I looked at your screenshoot?s and i?m impressed ... respekt !

[jjjustinnn 0]

First off, thanks for listening! :everybody:

 

I'm not saying it is easy, but really good POS systems will allow a product 'container' which is made up of smaller components. This is the only way to acheive a product that will work for a clothing company and a computer company at the same time.

Once a 'container' product is built, each individual component can then have many attributes, such as:

- sku's to deplete stock

- weight to create a final ship weight based on components

- different images for each attribute is also very important.

 

Obviously all the shop owners have valid concerns. But there are currently no contribs or modules that I know of that will allow a product image to change when you select a different color. This is important to consumers to get a 'feel' for what they are buying, and it is extremely common on the web in general. Not to mention the stock level problem that a color selection creates in oSc.

 

The most efficient way to do this in my opinion is to create a master_product_id, which can function either as the product itself, or be populated with slave_product_id's. From there, each slave can deplete stock, add weight, have images attached.

 

Then a simple :cough: admin button to "build" a product and add one attribute at a time.

:-j.

[Shopsearch.dk 0]

I'm already running a small OsC-based shop, and trying to set up a new shop with more than 2000 different items (cloth) and all have different attributes in colour and size.

 

So:

2. a reference field :

ie a blue short size small has a diferent reference number than a blue short size large and so on....  in that case a reference number at the product level is useless.

A store owner with only common sense

:thumbsup:

 

is absolutly Vital for me.

 

Ive been looking through all Contribs to find something to meet my needs,

but without any luck :'(

[saborchulo 0]

tshirt (50 in stock)

-- Style 1 (10 in stock)

---- White

---- Large

-- Style 2 (15 in stock)

---- White

---- Medium

-- Style 3 (15 in stock)

---- Blue

---- Medium

Style 4 (10 in stock)

---- Red

---- Medium.

 

With that type of structure, does that mean you have an item Sku for a tshirt?

The way I invision it is having a virtual product (a container) that would house lets say:

Item: Description: Attribute#1: Attribute#2:

1234 Tshirt Large White

4567 Tshirt Medium White

8910 Tshirt Large Blue

 

Here the parent/virtual product/container would group these items together each with their attributes and corresponding weight, stock, cost, gpm etc. I guess what I am trying to understand is why the parent or virtual product would need stock?

In that line of business do you have just a general number over every item, like I have 5000 shorts, shorts have an sku# of 1234, I have 9000 tshirts, all shirts have a sku# of 4567?

[♥Hierophant 0]

The virtual parent item's stock total would simply be a total of its children. Simple enough to do with basic math on a computer. There are products I need to know how much is available at a glance. Most of my products are repackaged from Bulk. So I need to know how many pounds or ounces of a product exist in total for re-ordering purposes. While I do sell some clothes and that was in my example, it isn't a core business nor something I wish to focus on.

 

My SKUS are actually based off of quasi-ISBN numbers and are in the following format:

 

99W-CCCIIIIISS

 

99W - Is my Group Number and allows me to make a false ISBN in my software. Also signifies that the item is not an actual book to the software.

 

CCC - This is my sidelines category for internal inventory.

 

IIIII - This is the item number itself.

 

SS - This reflects the style, size or options on a product. With clothes, the first digit would reflect the size and the second the color. Other products would have different meanings for each digit.

 

Since most of my products are handmade or we purchase in bulk (i.e. Essential Oils by the gallon) and repackage, there are no UPC or EAN barcodes on our products and we had to develop our own system. I believe my system is similar to how the UPC system works but haven't really compared. Currently, I type everything but the Style digits into the Model Number Field, which is renamed Item Code, and the style digits are dealt with manually at the time of order fulfillment. Would like a system that allows the combination of the two to create a complete skew on the order form.

 

Of course, any system put into place should be flexible enough to deal with anyone's SKU system.

[DodgerLD 0]

This is the exact same problem I'm faced with.

 

I've come up with the following database schema so far.

 

products

id

title

 

items

id

p_id

quantity

price

 

product_attributes

p_id

a_id

 

attributes

id

name

 

attribute_values

id

a_id

value

 

item_attribute_values

i_id

av_id

 

With this design you can find out the attributes of a particular product (e.g. Size, Color), as well as list the attribute values for a single item (e.g. Small, Red). A quantity is also maintained for each item, and attributes and attribute values are stored in 'look-up' tables. It allows for a variable number of attributes and attribute values for each product.

 

The problem I currently have is mapping a users' selection of attribute values (options), to an item in the item table. One idea I guess would be to construct the item PK from attribute value ID's, e.g. P001-AV3-AV5 (where av3 = Small, av5 = Red). Then the user selections could be concatenated with the product id to form a unique item identifier. The reason I don't like this approach is due to the variable nature of product attributes; e.g. if the product had 4 or 5 attributes, the item PK would end up looking something like this: P001-AV1-AV5-AV7-AV2.

 

Just something to think about! ;)

 

mySQL 'dump' [w/sample data]

[♥westkoast 0]

As for the Color / Size attribute stock which seems to be a huge problem for people:

 

1. Select Color

2. Page refreshes available size

3. Select Size

4. Click Add to cart

 

Add to cart button is not active untill both a "color" and "size" are available.

 

For smaller customers I do a simple stock table for them

 

id = unique id

pID = product id

sID = stype associated with that product

Sizes

 

id pID sID S M L XL XXL, etc

 

This is a very static example but number are then put int he S, M, L, XL from the admin tool. If a number goes to 0 then that option is removed automatically from the "drop down" list on a the product page.

 

Works very nicely for planned sites, however this woul d not work out of the box for people because it relies on a schema that would not fit the masses.

[Monk 0]

As for the Color / Size attribute stock which seems to be a huge problem for people:

 

1. Select Color

2. Page refreshes available size

3. Select Size

4. Click Add to cart

 

Add to cart button is not active untill both a "color" and "size" are available.

 

I recently helped set up a site that has a similar system as I've seen mentioned in this thread. Take a look at ManateeGolf.com specifically the section on Irons. We built a "dependent" attributes system in which every choice is dependent upon what you previuosly selected. The end result is a customized product with a special price. The but now button does not appear until you've made all the selections.

 

The site has been live for about a month and we are just now working out the bugs. Once its clean and we have worked out any issues we will post as a contribution. If anyone is interested in details, post questions and I'll let you know the details.

[clouds 0]

Look at this ; i think this is the must of OSC

http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=140035

 

 

 

First off, I think the stock issue is important, but problematic.

what happens if you sell sirts, you have S,M,L,XL, in red, blue and green.

How do you then manage the stock? you'll have to make a two dimentional array in order to handle it (3 yellow L, 2 green XL, 5 white S, and so on...) I think the master product contributions could come in handy here - create a master product (shirt) with salves (one for each size) and assign them attributes (for the colors).

 

Now, What I think is needed (or would be nice to have) in the attributes section is:

1. configure product attributes in admin/categories.php

2. allow attribute type (radio/ checkbox, etc.)

3. very important: modify the whole Option-Value_attribute interface. What I envision is something like this: (bear with me)

 

When you click on admin/products_attributes.php you are brought to a page that lists all the Options (size, color, etc.), where the first one (alphabetically, whatever) is highlited, and only it's Values are visible in the Values part of the page (could be where it is now...).  in the Values table, you don't need the "Option Name" column, because you're only seeing those values of the selected Option.

Below these two tables is another table, which lists all the products that have this Option. One row per product. below the list is another row with a dropdown list of all the other products, and a button to add this product to the list. Clicking on a product in this list will open a sub-table under the item (javascript, reload the page, whatever...) with all the Values of this Option. on each row of this sub-table you'll have two radio buttons, to activate or diactivate the Value, and a textbox for added price (and added wheight, if we go there).

 

This view will clear all the clutter on this page, make it narrower (someone said even hi-res screens couldn't handle it the way it is), and make adding attributes far more intuitive.

 

That's it for now,

-Ethan

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[GiannaL 0]

I have been hunting for a way to do a combination what peufeu and monk have done in these two examples. Choice dependent attributes just as monk has done with the golf site, and also changing the product image as the attributes are chosen simular to what peufeu has done on the el modjo site. My lack of experience is the problem :-;

 

Would either monk or peufeu be willing to help me with this?

 

Gianna

 

You mean, something like that :

...

Example 3

This one is finished, you can buy ;)

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I recently helped set up a site that has a similar system as I've seen mentioned in this thread. Take a look at ManateeGolf.com specifically the section on Irons. We built a "dependent" attributes system in which every choice is dependent upon what you previuosly selected. The end result is a customized product with a special price. The but now button does not appear until you've made all the selections.

 

The site has been live for about a month and we are just now working out the bugs. Once its clean and we have worked out any issues we will post as a contribution. If anyone is interested in details, post questions and I'll let you know the details.

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