[eluser]theprodigy[/eluser]
Hey all,
I have a client who has suggested a multi-site cart. By this, I mean the user can put items into the cart from site a, site b, site c, etc and only have to check out one time to purchase all items entered.
I would like to build this in such a way that adding another site to the mix would be as relatively painless as possible. The client wants to start with a set number of sites, but I'm not sure if that number will grow in the future.
These different sites are full domains, not sub-domains, so any session data will be lost (but still reachable via db, I believe). I have an idea, but am looking for second opinions / other ideas.
My idea:
Code:
1. Setup the shopping cart / catagory code as a web service. All heavy lifting will be done through this.
2. All sites are setup with their site specific designs, config files to set site_id, and data will be pulled via connection to shopping cart web service
3. Either setup links to the other sites as form submissions passing in hidden variables containing necessary session data, or set cookies to store this data.
4. When on next site, check to see if posted value or cookie exists, if not create new session, if so, connect to that session to continue user shopping.
I don't like the idea of hacking a session to continue shopping, but not exactly sure how to do this otherwise. Any and all comments will be greatly appreciated.
