[ic] SOLVED: Global Price Discount help needed

[Mark Weaver]

Mark Weaver wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've got a problem I need some assistance with. I'd like to make product 
> discounts available on a client's storefront. I've been pouring over the 
> documentation and search the archives but I've yet to find any 
> information on the manner in which I'd like to implement this.
> 
> I'd like to be able to set a global discount percentage that needs only 
> to be changed or adjusted in one place per the request of the client. 
> Below is what I'd like to do in the catalog.cfg file:
> 
> PriceField      0
> CommonAdjust    pricing:q2,q10,q25,q50,q100, products:price -20% 
> ;:sale_price, ;$, ==:options
> 
> is this possible? In short what I need it to do is apply the 20% 
> discount on every item being displayed and placed into the shopping 
> cart. I've read how it can be done on a per-item basis by entering the 
> code for it on the product pages, the fly page and in the shopping cart, 
> however I'd really like to be able to do this globally so it only needs 
> to be changed in one place.
> 
> thanks,
> 

Due to the severe lack of interest in answering my post save one 
individual who at least offered a commercial solution, thank you for 
your response, I was forced to hack this out on my own. I really 
don't understand sometimes the total lack of interest when something 
is posted here that was likely asked a bazillion times. At least 
someone could have posted a link to the previous information.

At any rate what brought the final solution was reading a post by 
Mike Heins more or less duplicating the information that can be 
found on the RTFM site concerning CommonAdjust. It just took a while 
and repeated re-reading of the information for things to begin to 
sink in to a point where the information was usable. That 
information can be found here:

http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/docs/frames/ic_ecommerce_11.html

My final and WORKING solution to my original post for help was this:

PriceField      0
AutoModifier    pricing:price_group
CommonAdjust    products:price, -20%, pricing:q2,q10,q25,q50,q100, 
;products:price, ;$

The above example will implement a GLOBAL discount of 20% to all 
items within the Interchange products database. It is applied across 
the board and does translate into the final shopping cart sub-total. 
It has been tested and found to be a stable and workable solution. 
WARNING: while I do not in anyway fully understand the inner 
workings of Interchange and the way in which it makes use of the 
commonAdjust feature at present I'm uncertain whether or not the 
"AutoModifier" bit is even necessary.

The value used as "-20%" means that 20% is subtracted from the 
product:price that is entered when the item is added to the 
Interchange products database. If the product price is $10.00, and 
this value is used then the item price that is displayed and applied 
to the item in the shopping cart is $8.00. To mark things up you 
would simply reverse the sign and make the value a positive value. 
There are also ways to do this on a per item basis but since that is 
beyond the scope of my current needs for this project I haven't yet 
explored that territory. If and when I do I will be sure to post it 
for posterity and for dumb buggers such as myself who can't get a 
bite on the mailing list.  ;)

I'm posting this here for posterities sake because I know there will 
be others in the future who will be looking and needing this 
information but won't have the luxary of waiting on noone to answer 
their question. Frankly I just don't understand the elitist attitude 
of some. I do not apply this to those who work directly on the 
Interchange project because I know they're extremely busy and I 
thank them for an awesome and powerful e-commerce solution.

For future reference... The link to the page given above is insanely 
undiscipherable to the unintiated. In plain words the documentation, 
while thorough, makes precious little sense and should seriously be 
supplimented by common language howto's and examples of HOW to do 
things. And yes... I would be willing to help with that. I don't 
know if there is a wiki for Interchange since a google search 
doesn't return anything definitive on the matter. If there isn't 
then there sure as hell should be - it would be a wonderful resource 
for those of us that are slightly thick-headed or micro-focused on a 
particular task and don't have enough brain cells free to do out of 
the box thinking at times.

-- 
Mark

"If you have found a very wise man, then you've found
a man that at one time was an idiot and lived long enough
to learn from his own stupidity."