AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I have a need to track budgets for users and need to either add new columns to the database or add a new table.

Is this possible and if so, how?

Thanks
Rick

You can do either by accessing the SQL Server directly. A new table is preferable with a name that Able would never name it. If you add new fields to the existing table, you might run into problems at upgrade time.

Thanks. How would I access the database? Is it usually stored with AbleCommerce? This is my first project with the software. Is there a free alternative to Sql Server Manager?

Rick

Read about DAL and custom queries from here
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... uilder_API

Read following thread to auto generate code for you custom tables.
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9530

By the way how many columns you would need? Are those columns or data would be needed for users only?

Thanks, I'll check those links. We want to add 3 columns: user_id, max budget, current budget, and prevent them from going over budget.

Rick

You can also check user settings if it help you store your information. In this case there will be no need of creating custom columns etc and also DataPort would take care of importing/exporting that data in XML import/export. Read following thread about user settings
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=10487

Thanks for the great info.

I think I'm going to use the ac_usersetting table as follows:

Example for user #1:

UserSettingID: (auto-incremented)
UserID: 1
FieldName: MaxBudget
FieldValue: 1000

UserSettingID: (auto-incremented)
UserID: 1
FieldName: CurrentBudget
FieldValue: 300

Rick