Disable Add to Cart button based on time

Hello!!

I want to prevent a customer from buying a specific item after a certain time of day.

For instance, this site delivers items by 10am. So they don't want anyone purchasing anything after 9am for that days' shopping item.

I have the database constructed in such a way that I can isolate the items that need to be disabled, but I'm trying to figure out how to best disable the button.

I have some code that keeps track of the time, so I can trigger an action based on that, I just need to figure out what action to do. I can disable in the database, but would rather just disable the buy button.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

You could implement a server side validation that just does the check when you submit the form for the add to cart. You could also use an if statement to say:

if the current time is later than the cutoff time then
display your message
else
display your add to cart button

This is just high level of how you could do this, there are other ways you could implement this as well. I think having some sort of validation that does the check in addition to hiding the button would be the best bet in case the user submits the form some other way.

Excellent, thanks.....that makes sense...

Ok, this is just to post the solution in case someone searches on this topic.

Here is the code for where the button is placed:


<?php
if (Date('d M Y', $mon) < Date('d M Y'))
echo "Sorry no more orders for today";
elseif (Date('d M Y', $mon) > Date('d M Y'))
echo '<input type="image" src="WA_eCart/Images/Pacifica/Btn3_EN_addtocart.gif" border="0" value="Add to Cart" name="teacherslunchbox_21_ATC" >';

elseif (Date('d M Y', $mon) == Date('d M Y'))
if (Date("Hi") + 300 < "900")
echo '<input type="image" src="WA_eCart/Images/Pacifica/Btn3_EN_addtocart.gif" border="0" value="Add to Cart" name="teacherslunchbox_21_ATC" >';

else
echo "Sorry no more orders for today";
?>


The page has two weeks worth of possible orders fed by a database.

$mon holds a date that could be in the future or the past. I get this date from script at the beginning of the page by using this script (repeating and tweaking it to get each day's date for the two week period so I have a $mon, $mon2, $tues, $tues2, etc)

<?php
$tod=date("N")-1;
$mon=strtotime('-'.$tod.' days');
?>

So for example, if today is Wed, it could be Mon previous to today, or the Mon coming up. So first I see if Monday is before today (which means they can't order on a past date) so I echo "sorry, blah blah"

Then if that date is in the future, I place the button.

If the date happens to be TODAY, and it's before 9am, then place the button

If it's TODAY but past 9am, echo "sorry, blah blah" since it's too late to order and get it in time for lunch (it's a sandwich shop)

I'm a beginner PHP person, so if this is hokey, I'd appreciate any tweaks. However, it seems to work fine and I wanted to get it out there in the forum in case someone else can use it.

Thanks all,
Rich

Nice use of the php date and time functions, they are pretty handy for this type of stuff. All looks good to me if you are getting the result you are hoping for I would say this is a success. I think this will definitely benefit other users that are looking into this type of feature.

Just a code update. Had to wrap the dates being compared with a strtotime function:

<?php
if (strtotime(Date('d M Y', $mon)) < strtotime(Date('d M Y')))
echo "Sorry no more orders for today";
elseif (strtotime(Date('d M Y', $mon)) > strtotime(Date('d M Y')))
echo '<input type="image" src="WA_eCart/Images/Pacifica/Btn3_EN_addtocart.gif" border="0" value="Add to Cart" name="teacherslunchbox_21_ATC" >';

elseif (strtotime(Date('d M Y', $mon)) == strtotime(Date('d M Y')))
if (Date("Hi") + 300 < "900")
echo '<input type="image" src="WA_eCart/Images/Pacifica/Btn3_EN_addtocart.gif" border="0" value="Add to Cart" name="teacherslunchbox_21_ATC" >';

else
echo "Sorry no more orders for today";
?>