RE: [PHP] how to determine if shopping cart has been abandoned?

Jay Blanchard <mailto:jay.blanchard@niicommunications.com> on Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:25 PM said: > In another thread on another list I pointed out to another person > designing a cart that the items in the cart are removed from inventory > while they are in the cart even though no check-out has occured. If > the cart is abandoned I want to return those items to the shelf as > quickly as possible, making them available for other shoppers. A lot > of folks get this wrong IMHO...they do not remove the item from > inventory when it is placed in the cart, they do it at check-out. > This could cause concerns if the items in question are popular. I brought up this same issue recently with some coworkers and everyone (except me) thought it would be a good idea to do it at checkout. I took your approach which is to remove it when the customer "takes it off the shelf" so to speak. Would it be too complicated to say "5 in inventory, 2 of those are in customer shopping carts"? Or something along those lines? Chris. p.s. Does anyone know of any mailing lists that deal with e-commerce and shopping cart design (code/implementation/logic/etc.)??? -- Don't like reformatting your Outlook replies? Now there's relief! http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/