CT->Adding products to cart via ajax

Question

These would be considered pre-sales questions:

1. Can I add products to my cart via ajax in CartThrob?
2. Can I add a custom field where I can store some JSON for each product in my cart?
3. If I add the custom field, is it accessible at all stages of checkout, from cart item to the Thank You page and Order Confirmation Email?
4. How customizable is the Discount engine? I need to have discounts by SKU.
5. Can we have one product and modify it's attributes, like price, SKU, etc before it is inserted into the cart and have it retain that info through out the process?

Answer 1

1. Yes. If you do not have EE's secure forms turned on, it's simple.

   If you have EE's secure forms turned on, you will need to pass a fresh XID hash each time you add a product. Our example store code (does not include ajax add to cart) includes ajax customer info updates, and has an example of refreshing the XID. That same method can be applied to adding items to the cart.

2. Yes. You can either store it as an item_option. or you could create a "custom_data" field which is not specific to a certain product. It might be better to use custom_data[product_123] so that the JSON doesn't get output by our item_options tag.

3. Yes. If its' an item_option it'll be stored with the item in the order. If it's custom_data, you'd need to have a dedicated field in the order channel.

4. It uses plugins. If one of the existing plugins doesn't work, and you know PHP, you can create your own. The existing plugins all have the ability to apply to specific entry ids. If it needs to apply to a different product field, then a custom plugin would be in order.

5. Yes. You can specify many things as parameters in the add_to_cart_form. Price, shipping, item_options, etc.