NYCPHP Meetup

Wed Oct 1 09:57:48 EDT 2003

1. From my personal experience, this doesn't happen all that often. 
The success (or lack of) the site will have little to do with how you deal with this situation.

2. If you want my $0.02, I think the solution is really better approached from a UI perspective.
Don't show an inventory on the product page.
If the product has several variants (like A shirt with sizes and colors) there is no good way of showing inventory even if you wanted to. If the product has only 1 variant (like a music CD), if you really have to, just show a general term for inventory levels on the product page, something like: "In stock", "Only a few left", "Out of stock". Then whenever you decide to actually decrease stock levels, do the check.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jim Hendricks 
  To: NYPHP Talk 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 7:44 AM
  Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...

  If you have informed the client of how the end user will preceive the application as broken because there was inventory available when they placed an item in the cart, but the inventory was gone by the time they checked out, and they still want to go with the FIFO, then you need to consider how important this client is to your business.  If they are not that important, then stand on principle, state that you can't intentionally develop a defective application, then see how the cookie crumbles.  If they are important to your business, make sure they understand that the only reason you are developing the application in a way you consider defective is because they have asked for it, and you will not be held responsible if later their customers are complaining about this defective behavior.  You may also want to put code in to track when this situation occurs.  This way, when you see a high occurance of this, you can inform your client that your warning is coming true.

  Jim
  ______________________________________________________________
  Jim Hendricks, President, Biz Computing, Inc
  Phone:  (201) 599-9380     Email: jim at bizcomputinginc.com
  Web: www.bizcomputinginc.com 
  Snail:  Jim Hendricks,  Biz Computing, Inc.,  255 McKinley Ave, New Milford, NJ 07646
  ______________________________________________________________

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Phil Powell 
    To: NYPHP Talk 
    Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 11:32 PM
    Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...

    Yes thanx, however, the client wanted a "FIFO" solution which means that if there are 30 items in stock and you ordered all 30 while someone else ordered 1, both of you will see 30 in stock until one of you checks out; whoever checks out first, wins!

    Phil
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: tom at supertom.com 
      To: NYPHP Talk 
      Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 8:40 AM
      Subject: RE: [nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...

      Phil,

      The way this is done in the manufacturing world is with an "inventory allocated" field.  This field holds the number of quantity of your current inventory that is "held" or allocated for another purpose, such as checkout.  Similar to inventory in a store, nothing should get removed from inventory until it is sold.  What this means to you - I would decrement inventory on the screen, and if he is that particular about it, display both the inventory and the allocated fields.

      However, with this said, personally I feel that you need to do whatever the customer is asking for, as long as it is in the scope and budget of the project.  As a consultant, it is your job to inform him of the risks involved (which you have done), but ultimately do what he asks.

      Phil, I hope you are doing this job for ALOT more than the last one (architecture for $68, remember?). :-)

      Good Luck!

      Tom

      ***************************************************
      What's Tom listening to right now?  Find out here:
      http://www.supertom.com/current_track.php

        -----Original Message-----
        From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org]On Behalf Of Phil Powell
        Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 1:37 AM
        To: NYPHP Talk
        Subject: [nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...

        ...am I cursed?

        Another client is threatening to "delete everything" calling my work a "waste of time".  There is, however, one possible sane reason for this, and I need to get some PHP guru advice on how to handle this.

        You have ordered one item and placed it into your cart.  Let's say you ordered one small black t-shirt.  Your cart will have the product_id, color_id and size_id for the small black t-shirt.  The quantity of this item is, let's say 30.  You have one in your cart, so how many are available:

        1) 29
        2) 30

        Now let's say that while I ordered one small black t-shirt, Sven ordered 1 small black t-shirt, Anders ordered one black t-shirt, and Olov ordered one black t-shirt.  If all four of us, at one time, are all ordering the same item and putting it into our carts, how many should there be available to us:

        1) 26
        2) 25
        3) 29
        4) 30

        This is where the contention comes in.  The client wants it done "FIFO" (First In First Out) meaning that whoever gets it first will subtract the quantity - but I dispute that (coming from somewhat of a Java background) that since PHP doesn't so single-threading, that means that all four of us could order t-shirts,  but the quantity has to reflect that all four of us are ordering (multi-threading).

        I dunno, help!

        Phil

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[nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...