Creating basic product configurator using PHP/mySQL

[Webmensch]

I have been trying to build a basic product configurator for my website using PHP/mySQL in Dreamweaver CS5 with no success and am desperate for assistance.

Briefly, my goal is to provide a series of steps whereby the user can select specific components via radio buttons that, once completed, will show an itemized list of the components selected and (where available) a photo of the assembled product, based upon those same selections. I have generated a database via phpMyAdmin which contains 4 tables listing all the configurations possible.

If someone has knowledge and/or experience in building something like this, please contact me as soon as possible and I will gladly provide further details. Thanks a lot!

[David_Powers]

Moved to the Dreamweaver Application Development forum.

[pziecina]

Hi

Are you talking about something similar to a car, (auto) manufacturers web site, where one adds the different options then views the resulting auto?

PZ

[Webmensch]

Hello PZ,

Thanks for responding.

Yes, quite similar to what some of the car manufacturers now offer. However, something more approximate in functionality would be this: http://www.ufpi.com/tools/deckdesign/visualizer.htm (I have already contacted the company about getting more info re: their configurator tool but they've not been very forthcoming with answers to my questions).

[pziecina]

Hi

(I have already contacted the company about getting more info re: 
their configurator tool but they've not been very forthcoming with 
answers to my questions

This is not surprising, such scripts are often custom built, and can be expensive to create.

The site itself is actually an ajax site, where the various selections are overlaid by default then the visibility turned on/off as required. The main image for the basic background image, (depending upon the 'decking' selection) is loaded via ajax along with the various other options available.

Even viewing the source, (including the css and javascript) would not give you the full info required to recreate the effect as much is included in the json/server files.

However unless you are considering paying someone to do this for you, I would recommend viewing the available info, html/css/javascript to give you an idea of what is required, (some files are 'standard' and can be ignored at this point, such as jquery/analytics's code).

PZ

[Webmensch]

Well, frankly my company has zero budget for outsourcing this portion of the project, hence my futile (thus far) attempt at building something similar myself (scripting remains my weakest skill to date). I've eyeballed their source code numerous times and it just leaves my head spinning. Any additional help/hints/references/etc you could provide would be most appreciated.

[pziecina]

Hi

Whilst not ideal you could try a simple show/hide behaviour for 'swapping' the images used to make up the image details, but even this will require a reasonable proficiency in javascript.

The other, (although much slower) alternative, is to use a different complete image that has all the selected options, and use ajax to load the image as required. This would of course still require javascript to 'evaluate' the different form options selected by the user, but as a complete image would be used it would require considerably less programming.

As an example, if you have two options for the type and colour of the wood used and another two options for the hand-rail, you could use the 0/1, (zero/one numbers) returned by the selection to make up the file name for the image.

e.g. -

(pseudo code)

if selected selection1 = 1 else selection1 = 0

if selected selection2 = 1 else selection2 = 0

item 1 selected and item 2 not selected would give a image file name of - 10.png to be loaded, (you would of course use an update image button to trigger the ajax call in this usage).

PZ