Stock by Attribute v4.0 addon for v1.3.5-1.3.9

Haven't tested the operation yet; however, the files have been updated to support incorporation into a vanilla ZC 1.5.5 install.

The new version has both a default template as well as a responsive classic version. Files affected in both templates are included for comparison against each of the respective folders.

Okay, probably not a great explanation, I'm in processing mode and would have to change hats to maybe be more coherent... :)

https://github.com/mc12345678/Stock_By_Attributes_Combined

mc12345678:

Yeah, wanted to be sure could get the product added to the cart first (fix provided above) then would need to apply the same fix to the includes/functions/functions_lookup.php file (ZC 1.5.3/1.5.4 line 252, ZC 1.5.1 line 255).
I applied the change to line 252. It allows me to add the product to the cart and as long as I add an entry in the SBA table for the text attribute with a quantity it will allow checkout. Without the text attribute added and a quantity assigned it marks it as out of stock. Not sure if that's what you intended.

I wasn't sure if the remaining comments were about changes to support 1.5.5 or if you meant for me to pick up additional changes for disabling the dynamic dropdowns. If you want me to do more let me know.

badarac:

I applied the change to line 252. It allows me to add the product to the cart and as long as I add an entry in the SBA table for the text attribute with a quantity it will allow checkout. Without the text attribute added and a quantity assigned it marks it as out of stock. Not sure if that's what you intended.

I wasn't sure if the remaining comments were about changes to support 1.5.5 or if you meant for me to pick up additional changes for disabling the dynamic dropdowns. If you want me to do more let me know.

So, to support having SBA installed and to track stock only when/where needed instead of earlier versions in some way or another requiring all product with attributes to be tracked by SBA, I've updated the template files to disable dynamic dropdowns when the attribute list of a product contains an attribute that is not yet managed by DD. That is/was the stuff about some of the other posting.

As to the text attribute and it's need in the SBA variants. While not a great solution perhaps, but the checks performed when adding to the cart verfy that the attributes present are supported by the definition(s) for the product... ZC doesn't provide such a check per se where one could use web tools such as firebug for firefox to modify the attributes that will be posted and submit the product to the cart and basically it will go through if properly modified. But, the store owner would see this as an error and either dump the order or ask the customer about it.

With SBA or the concept behind it, one "complexity" is that when mixing attributes, one sub-attrbute may not exist for the product by "design" or vendor availability. So it is important to validate that the customer chosen options exist as defined by the store owner. The DD part mostly takes care of that (though such a non-existent option actually shows as out-of-stock instead of being hidden from display), but need/want to be sure to provide functionality when javascript is also not available or when the store owner chooses not to use DD for anything.

So... To meet that end, a text attribute should be associated with the product (whether required to filled in or not). If it is a non-stock beaing attribute, it should be combined with other variants... If say it is stock bearing, like only have so many badges that can be printed with information, then the text attribute should be individual, but as it stands, if the text attribute is split out so should all the other attributes for that product...

As development continues and such idiosynchrocies identified more controls are likely to be added to the admin side, but still trying to basically provide the largest application to the basic possibilities without limiting expansion.

Fyi and fwiw I just learned that 1.5.5 will add some additional CSS features to attributes. That change will affect tpl_module_attributes.php which s modified by this plugin. I am therefore considering applying that change across all 1.5.x versions instead of making the change apply only to 1.5.5. I don't see a negative to this in functionality, only in "philosophy"... Especially as the change would have to be incorporated into the DD part... Somewhat simplifies "maintenance" and adds the capability to users of older systems.

Thoughts?

I don't see a downside to that. I don't see how doing it would cause any problems either. It's just more targeted styling.

Having a bit of fun, in that SBA is allowing me to add out of stock attributes to the shopping cart. The top of the page displays the success message, but the cart itself shows the item is out of stock.

We don't want to hide out of stock attributes, because we may get that variant back in stock. We really don't want to manage backorders, since a significant number of variations are short lived, and we won't get them back into stock, but don't know until we reorder.

I updated SBA from GitHub today, with the same result. ZC 1.5.4

Dynamic Drop Downs:
Enable Dynamic Dropdowns 2 Tried every option here
Product Info Single Attribute Display Plugin sequenced_dropdowns Tried every combination here
Show Out of Stock Attributes False Tried both
Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin sba_sequenced_dropdowns Tried every combination here
Mark Out of Stock Attributes Right
Display Out of Stock Message Line True
Prevent Adding Out of Stock to Cart True Seems like this would be the place...
SBA Number of Records to Displayed 25

**Stock **
Title Value
Check stock level true
Subtract stock true
Allow Checkout true
Mark product out of stock ***
Stock Re-order level 5
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 0
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart 1
Product Quantity Decimals 0
Show Shopping Cart - Delete Checkboxes or Delete Button 3
Show Shopping Cart - Update Cart Button Location 3
Show New Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 1
Show Featured Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 2
Show Special Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 3
Show Upcoming Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 4
Show Notice of Combining Shopping Cart on Login 1
SBA Show Available Stock Level in Cart (when less than order) true
SBA Display Attributes Images false
SBA Display Custom ID true
SBA Display Search List Box true
SBA Display Images in Admin true
SBA Show Stock Level on Product Info Page true
SBA Original Price Struck Through true
SBA Display Search Box Only false

michael_rebreathe:

Having a bit of fun, in that SBA is allowing me to add out of stock attributes to the shopping cart. The top of the page displays the success message, but the cart itself shows the item is out of stock.

We don't want to hide out of stock attributes, because we may get that variant back in stock. We really don't want to manage backorders, since a significant number of variations are short lived, and we won't get them back into stock, but don't know until we reorder.

I updated SBA from GitHub today, with the same result. ZC 1.5.4

Dynamic Drop Downs:
Enable Dynamic Dropdowns 2 Tried every option here
Product Info Single Attribute Display Plugin sequenced_dropdowns Tried every combination here
Show Out of Stock Attributes False Tried both
Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin sba_sequenced_dropdowns Tried every combination here
Mark Out of Stock Attributes Right
Display Out of Stock Message Line True
Prevent Adding Out of Stock to Cart True Seems like this would be the place...
SBA Number of Records to Displayed 25

**Stock **
Title Value
Check stock level true
Subtract stock true
Allow Checkout true
Mark product out of stock ***
Stock Re-order level 5
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 0
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart 1
Product Quantity Decimals 0
Show Shopping Cart - Delete Checkboxes or Delete Button 3
Show Shopping Cart - Update Cart Button Location 3
Show New Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 1
Show Featured Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 2
Show Special Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 3
Show Upcoming Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 4
Show Notice of Combining Shopping Cart on Login 1
SBA Show Available Stock Level in Cart (when less than order) true
SBA Display Attributes Images false
SBA Display Custom ID true
SBA Display Search List Box true
SBA Display Images in Admin true
SBA Show Stock Level on Product Info Page true
SBA Original Price Struck Through true
SBA Display Search Box Only false

Allow Checkout true

This allows adding product to the cart even if it is out-of-stock and is one of the factors in identifying whether a product can be added that has a zero quantity... So initial question and not trying to be facetious or rude, is which do you want to be able to add product to the cart when it is out-of-stock and to be backordered regardless if it is tracked by SBA, not allow any product to be added to the cart that is out-of-stock or to only limit this possibility for product that is stocked by attributes?

The first two of those three options is directly supported by ZC and SBA, the third would be some form of a code change.

Turns out I updated with the version at https://github.com/potteryhouse/stock_by_attribute_1.5.4

There is also the combined version at https://github.com/mc12345678/Stock_By_Attributes_Combined

This may sound like a stupid question, but which version do I use?
/admin and /include at the root of the repostiory OR
/1_5_3 and 1_5_4

Might be nice to add a clarification in the readme...

michael_rebreathe:

Turns out I updated with the version at https://github.com/potteryhouse/stock_by_attribute_1.5.4

There is also the combined version at https://github.com/mc12345678/Stock_By_Attributes_Combined

This may sound like a stupid question, but which version do I use?
/admin and /include at the root of the repostiory OR
/1_5_3 and 1_5_4

Might be nice to add a clarification in the readme...

Both. :)

The files in the ZC version sub-directory are those files that are different for each version. The remaining files (root files) are the same throughout and a reason why the two sets of previous files were combined... A whole lot of effort to update two sets of files (the central part of the SBA functionality and then the ZC modified files which really only serve as an interface. Instead of really needing to only update one set..)

Yeah, instructions need to be updated and seems like the code is near the ability to submit as an update to the version previously provided for ZC 1.5.1 requiring the documentation to be updated first.

My suggestion would be to load all of the files in the main includes and admin directories (no interaction with the store files really at that point) and then load the ZC version specific files. I'm about to install the software into a ZC 1.5.5 site to see how it works best so that the store can remain active while the software is installing and customers not see any significant glitch other than perhaps if they are loading the exact file that is being updated at the same time it is being overwritten...

mc12345678:

This allows adding product to the cart even if it is out-of-stock and is one of the factors in identifying whether a product can be added that has a zero quantity... So initial question and not trying to be facetious or rude, is which do you want to be able to add product to the cart when it is out-of-stock and to be backordered regardless if it is tracked by SBA, not allow any product to be added to the cart that is out-of-stock or to only limit this possibility for product that is stocked by attributes?

The first two of those three options is directly supported by ZC and SBA, the third would be some form of a code change.

I just set Allow Checkout to False. (still using potteryhouse code) Yay! now it won't add it to the cart, but opens the shopping cart showing that the quantity added has been adjusted per current inventory (in the case of no inventory, zero were added). We were really trying to avoid any adding to the shopping cart diverting the user from continuing on the path they were already on (buying stuff!) Thankfully, adding a quantity <= stock on hand still doesn't open the shopping cart.

I'm not trying to allow adding an out of stock item to the cart at all (SBA managed or not). This prevents even considering the option of a backorder, which is untenable with the changing availability of our products. Any product not tracked by SBA shows the "sold out" button rather than "add to cart" button, so there was no way to add an out-of-stock non-SBA item to the cart. We'd like to show that we offer a gizmo in green, even if it's out of stock. We just don't want it to be added to the cart. Preferably, with some indication of no stock when they are looking at and choosing the attributes.

Many of our items are consumables. If we're out of a 30ml bottle, most of our customers are perfectly happy to buy a couple 10ml bottles and try for the 30ml the next time they order. We want them to know that we do offer the big bottle, but it's just out of stock right now.

michael_rebreathe:

I just set Allow Checkout to False. (still using potteryhouse code) Yay! now it won't add it to the cart, but opens the shopping cart showing that the quantity added has been adjusted per current inventory (in the case of no inventory, zero were added). We were really trying to avoid any adding to the shopping cart diverting the user from continuing on the path they were already on (buying stuff!) Thankfully, adding a quantity <= stock on hand still doesn't open the shopping cart.

I'm not trying to allow adding an out of stock item to the cart at all (SBA managed or not). This prevents even considering the option of a backorder, which is untenable with the changing availability of our products. Any product not tracked by SBA shows the "sold out" button rather than "add to cart" button, so there was no way to add an out-of-stock non-SBA item to the cart. We'd like to show that we offer a gizmo in green, even if it's out of stock. We just don't want it to be added to the cart. Preferably, with some indication of no stock when they are looking at and choosing the attributes.

Many of our items are consumables. If we're out of a 30ml bottle, most of our customers are perfectly happy to buy a couple 10ml bottles and try for the 30ml the next time they order. We want them to know that we do offer the big bottle, but it's just out of stock right now.

Suggest going back to the Dynamic Dropdown settings and/or stock settings for SBA.. Do product only have one option name assigned or multiple? If multiple, what are the variants?

Are you using the option name type: SBA Select List (Dropdown) Basic for single attribute product?

If you use dynamic dropdowns for attributes, then the question comes to do you have product that has multiple option names and how would you like to present the information?

Give it a shot or describe the condition to try to evaluate further, but there is still something I recall about a change in ZC 1.5.4 that modified how the add-to-cart notifications were provided in such an attempt to add to cart when product is out-of-stock condition.

The Dynamic Dropdowns features cut the customer off at the pass by not allowing adding the product to the cart but as desired above indicating the availability (future as it may be) of the product to come with an out-of-stock notification adjacent to the name. The only caveat and it is described in the last page or two is if say there are three option values for option name 1, and 2 option values for option name 2, but the company doesn't produce one of the combinations in full like only one of the option name 2 items for one of the option name 1 attributes, then the non-existent (never to be produced) combination will still be presented as out-of-stock for now... Still need to incorporate the what to do if a combination of options on screen doesn't exist in reality.

FYI and FWIW,

Playing around with single attribute product to see how it is working currently and what can be done. Looks like in trying to "protect" from some undesirable actions being taken, single attribute (single option name) product have been affected to not work like they used to... Working on correcting that and not losing the multiple attribute functionality that has been added...

mc12345678:

Suggest going back to the Dynamic Dropdown settings and/or stock settings for SBA.. Do product only have one option name assigned or multiple? If multiple, what are the variants?

Are you using the option name type: SBA Select List (Dropdown) Basic for single attribute product?

If you use dynamic dropdowns for attributes, then the question comes to do you have product that has multiple option names and how would you like to present the information?

Give it a shot or describe the condition to try to evaluate further, but there is still something I recall about a change in ZC 1.5.4 that modified how the add-to-cart notifications were provided in such an attempt to add to cart when product is out-of-stock condition.

The Dynamic Dropdowns features cut the customer off at the pass by not allowing adding the product to the cart but as desired above indicating the availability (future as it may be) of the product to come with an out-of-stock notification adjacent to the name. The only caveat and it is described in the last page or two is if say there are three option values for option name 1, and 2 option values for option name 2, but the company doesn't produce one of the combinations in full like only one of the option name 2 items for one of the option name 1 attributes, then the non-existent (never to be produced) combination will still be presented as out-of-stock for now... Still need to incorporate the what to do if a combination of options on screen doesn't exist in reality.

• About 1/4 of our products have no attributes.
• Half of what remain have a single attribute (such as color or size, with red, green, blue, yellow and white // small, medium, large, extra large)
• The remaining have two attributes (such as color AND size)
• For a small but notable number of products, red and green are only available in medium and large sizes.
• We have two products with three attributes (color, size and flavor). We've divided them into chocolate xxx and vanilla xxx as two separate parent items, each with color and size as attributes. Mucking about with managing two-tier attributes is enough fun without three tiers

We want to show all combinations of attributes (even those without stock), but prevent out-of-stock combinations to be added to the cart. About half of what is out of stock can be replenished, the other half can't (or won't). We will remove combinations that we won't replenish, but want them to display at least up to the last sale. We won't always know that we have the last three of the large green gadget until we try to order more.

• Until we sell the last large green gadget, we want it to display and be "addable" to the cart. No brainer, not a problem
• Once we sell the last large green gadget, we want that option to show up in the selections, but not be "addable," here being the crux of the issue because if it is a good seller, we'll try to get more. Preferably, the dropdown will show an out of stock notice when it's chosen as well as prevent adding to the cart and not take the customer off of the gadget page to tell them it wasn't added to the cart. Since a large number of our products are consumables, they'll gladly buy two of the 10ml bottles instead of one 30ml bottle. We want to make sure that the customer sees the large version is an option, just not at this moment.
• If we try to get more large green gadgets and find out that they aren't produced anymore, we'll remove that option from SBA

I have tried quite a few plugins related to selecting attributes over the last 6 months. I know that at least one of them used a Java array with the current inventory for each option and combination. For the dropdowns, the customer had to select the first option first (which showed current inventory for all "large" and all "small" items). The second dropdown updated with the number of "large green" and "large red" or "small green" and "small red". The Java checked the current stock from the array when the "add to cart" button was pushed and prevented the call going forward.

It seems clear that this isn't the plugin that had that feature. Our management didn't want us to show the stock on hand, so I thought I turned that off. From your questions, it appears that I selected SBA instead of that one.

I'm poking around the code to trace where the option lists are populated to determine if I can recreate the Java stock tracking.

michael_rebreathe:

• About 1/4 of our products have no attributes.

• Half of what remain have a single attribute (such as color or size, with red, green, blue, yellow and white // small, medium, large, extra large)

• The remaining have two attributes (such as color AND size)

• For a small but notable number of products, red and green are only available in medium and large sizes.

• We have two products with three attributes (color, size and flavor). We've divided them into chocolate xxx and vanilla xxx as two separate parent items, each with color and size as attributes. Mucking about with managing two-tier attributes is enough fun without three tiers

We want to show all combinations of attributes (even those without stock), but prevent out-of-stock combinations to be added to the cart. About half of what is out of stock can be replenished, the other half can't (or won't). We will remove combinations that we won't replenish, but want them to display at least up to the last sale. We won't always know that we have the last three of the large green gadget until we try to order more.

• Until we sell the last large green gadget, we want it to display and be "addable" to the cart. No brainer, not a problem

• Once we sell the last large green gadget, we want that option to show up in the selections, but not be "addable," here being the crux of the issue because if it is a good seller, we'll try to get more. Preferably, the dropdown will show an out of stock notice when it's chosen as well as prevent adding to the cart and not take the customer off of the gadget page to tell them it wasn't added to the cart. Since a large number of our products are consumables, they'll gladly buy two of the 10ml bottles instead of one 30ml bottle. We want to make sure that the customer sees the large version is an option, just not at this moment.

• If we try to get more large green gadgets and find out that they aren't produced anymore, we'll remove that option from SBA

I have tried quite a few plugins related to selecting attributes over the last 6 months. I know that at least one of them used a Java array with the current inventory for each option and combination. For the dropdowns, the customer had to select the first option first (which showed current inventory for all "large" and all "small" items). The second dropdown updated with the number of "large green" and "large red" or "small green" and "small red". The Java checked the current stock from the array when the "add to cart" button was pushed and prevented the call going forward.

It seems clear that this isn't the plugin that had that feature. Our management didn't want us to show the stock on hand, so I thought I turned that off. From your questions, it appears that I selected SBA instead of that one.

I'm poking around the code to trace where the option lists are populated to determine if I can recreate the Java stock tracking.

Everything described there (except showing the total quantity of sub-product combined at the top of the list) was a part of this until I recently tried to make some improvements and didn't run through the complete litany of tests that between you and badarac have put it through... I tested things, and tried not to break previous operation, but on that latter part I missed a condition of consideration and was too focused on Dynamic Dropdown operation specifically with multiple option names (2, 3, etc...)... I'm finding some minor tweaks that are needed to restore this to it's former glory... Again, living breathing code... It needs people to identify the issues... There are some that have been repeated here multiple times and many if not all are captured in the github issues area... But the items identified recently have cropped up from some "over protection" that was too stringent.

As to the not allowing adding, if the javascript is capturing the products as out-of-stock, then it will/should also disable allowing selection of the product from the dropdown...

Currently in some situations/conditions I am still looking to apply SBA type features to the SBA style dropdown... If you give me a few more minutes of testing I can update the github repo with improvements to restore it's operation.

Okay, to let you move on with this in a functional state, I'm uploading the changes made thus far... There is still a minor issue in a thus far identified specific scenario with Dynamic Dropdowns when it is used for single attribute product, but the dropdown menu designed by potteryhouse/jeking is working the way it should have been including as described above to not allow selection of an out-of-attribute product but to at least show that the attribute is/might be a possibility... Should be posted momentarily to github.

Rereading your message, it would appear that this is infact a version that performed as described... When Dynamic Dropdowns is offered to provide for multiple attributes only, the javascript options/control described is available if then in the Dynamic Dropdowns menu: Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin is set to: sba_sequenced_dropdowns

That will then provide/show Please Select First for the first attribute/option name and then Please Select Next for the subsequent attribute/option name(s).

BTW, not entirely sure what the difficulty is with managing multi-attribute stock. Have you tried using EasyPopulate v4 to manage the stock? It has an SBA option for variants that have been defined allowing stock control of SBA variants....

Okay, updated the https://www.github.com/mc12345678/Stock_By_Attributes_Combined repro with recent changes.

Still have an issue where the "out-of-stock" message "incorrectly" appears for a single option name product that is tracked by Dynamic Dropdowns, where a notification is enabled, and I haven't chased down all the other criteria, but the way it is designed the message really shouldn't be displayed which would confuse a customer (assuming they read it), but it doesn't prevent adding the in-stock product to the cart.

If though the person installing the software has a "better" version of the includes/classes/pad_multiple_dropdowns.php file, then it can be used in place of the one provided in this version and infact, because potteryhouse/jeking did the work they did for single attribute products I would recommend staying away from using Dynamic Dropdowns for single attribute product and only using it for multiple attribute product at least as provided with this plugin... The option is there if it "works" for you, but hasn't been fully revised/updated for use with this plugin and if not mistaken is still provided as originally developed. (Could be wrong on that one, sorry.)

Anyways, updated with what looks like is operating the way it should have been before.. If not seeing the results, then please show the current settings (not the possibility of various settings being in potential conditions) or request the recommended settings to meet the above results...

Fyi, tested the new/current code regarding adding a product that is out-of-stock when the product is allowed to be added while out-of-stock. Worked provided dynamic dropdowns was set to false for allowed to add product that is out-of-stock. (Making a note that if the store allows adding out-of-stock then the setting in dynamic dropdowns should be overridden automatically.) Also "helps" if the javascript popup notification for adding out-of-stock is turned off (working on providing a back-order notification so that there is an actual difference displayed for back-order versus out-of-stock product.)

At any rate, trying to confirm that I've restored functionality to what it was and so far it looks like it is possible to work with low/out-of-stock quantities.

mc12345678:

Rereading your message, it would appear that this is infact a version that performed as described... When Dynamic Dropdowns is offered to provide for multiple attributes only, the javascript options/control described is available if then in the Dynamic Dropdowns menu: Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin is set to: sba_sequenced_dropdowns

That will then provide/show Please Select First for the first attribute/option name and then Please Select Next for the subsequent attribute/option name(s).

I thought I was going crazy. I know I tested a number of options before choosing SBA, but was quite sure this was one of the pros of SBA. Nice to know my memory isn't as bad as I started thinking...

BTW, not entirely sure what the difficulty is with managing multi-attribute stock. Have you tried using EasyPopulate v4 to manage the stock? It has an SBA option for variants that have been defined allowing stock control of SBA variants....

We're not having any difficulty in managing inventory with any combination of attributes. Our only problem was adding out-of-stock to the cart, and the later discovered shove to the shopping cart once we set Allow Checkout to false. The decision to limit our products to two attributes was for non-SBA reasons, but I was happy of this decision if I was going to tackle our issues in-house.

We (I) chose not to use EasyPopulate because managing the inventory was easy enough and seems to be glitch-free (aside from my understanding that canceled orders don't return "held" items to inventory). I don't want to pepper the site with lots of plugins, since managing updates quickly escalates to a major headache (as if a "clean" update is ever truly headache free).

Okay, updated the https://www.github.com/mc12345678/Stock_By_Attributes_Combined repro with recent changes.

Awesome! I'll try it out!

Still have an issue where the "out-of-stock" message "incorrectly" appears for a single option name product that is tracked by Dynamic Dropdowns, where a notification is enabled, and I haven't chased down all the other criteria, but the way it is designed the message really shouldn't be displayed which would confuse a customer (assuming they read it), but it doesn't prevent adding the in-stock product to the cart.

So are you suggesting Product Info Single Attribute Display Plugin => single_dropdown or sba_sequenced_dropdowns
and Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin => sba_sequenced_dropdowns ?

If though the person installing the software has a "better" version of the includes/classes/pad_multiple_dropdowns.php file, then it can be used in place of the one provided in this version and infact, because potteryhouse/jeking did the work they did for single attribute products I would recommend staying away from using Dynamic Dropdowns for single attribute product and only using it for multiple attribute product at least as provided with this plugin... The option is there if it "works" for you, but hasn't been fully revised/updated for use with this plugin and if not mistaken is still provided as originally developed. (Could be wrong on that one, sorry.)

Anyways, updated with what looks like is operating the way it should have been before.. If not seeing the results, then please show the current settings (not the possibility of various settings being in potential conditions) or request the recommended settings to meet the above results...

I'll be trying the new update shortly. Thanks for your "ontopishness!"

michael_rebreathe:

I thought I was going crazy. I know I tested a number of options before choosing SBA, but was quite sure this was one of the pros of SBA. Nice to know my memory isn't as bad as I started thinking...

We're not having any difficulty in managing inventory with any combination of attributes. Our only problem was adding out-of-stock to the cart, and the later discovered shove to the shopping cart once we set Allow Checkout to false. The decision to limit our products to two attributes was for non-SBA reasons, but I was happy of this decision if I was going to tackle our issues in-house.

We (I) chose not to use EasyPopulate because managing the inventory was easy enough and seems to be glitch-free (aside from my understanding that canceled orders don't return "held" items to inventory). I don't want to pepper the site with lots of plugins, since managing updates quickly escalates to a major headache (as if a "clean" update is ever truly headache free).

Awesome! I'll try it out!

So are you suggesting Product Info Single Attribute Display Plugin => single_dropdown or sba_sequenced_dropdowns
and Product Info Multiple Attribute Display Plugin => sba_sequenced_dropdowns ?

I'll be trying the new update shortly. Thanks for your "ontopishness!"

Well, I started this once and dunno' what happened, but lost my writeup...

So actually was saying that if want the javascript actions using the software that is provided by this plugin, then set Dynamic dropdowns to display with multiple attributes only, then for multiple attributes in the DD menu select the option that has sba in t (default). For single attrbute product, to show the out-of-stock notification select the option name type that also has sba in it's name (would be the sixth available in a vanilla install).

Thing is that in the last couple of hours with some more testing it looks like I still have an issue with text and upload filename boxes... I'm trying to work around it without modifying any other core code sections and also to keep things going. Issue seen at the moment is if a variant is populated with an attribute and a text field, nothing is added to the text, then when adding the product to the cart, the maximum to add is whatever is assigned in the sba table, good. But with necessary corrections made to functions_lookups, now while in the cart, the product appears to be out-of-stock because the cart functionality removed the attrbute designation for the text block because it was blank... So there's one piece not trying to modfy. Okay, so was able to do a sort of validation to make that go away, but then when adding the same product to the cart again this time with something in the text field, again the product can inaccurately be added to the cart to the maximum assigned in the sba table... No good...

Have a couple of thoughts, but am not happy with the current condition because I thought I had resolved the text issue... It does appear that the above is like adding mixed quantities of a product with the goal to be that the total does not exceed the sba table quantity... I know that currently sba doesn't deal with mixed quantities like the zc store does, is something to consider addressing later, but need to look at how to handle this issue and how zc handles adding two product each with text boxes but one filled in the other not or filled in differently...

Add to this, a concern I have about using session data to move around the cart is that the session data goes away when a logged in customer with items in the cart logs off (or gets logged off) and then sort of back at square one...

Now, I could force the text field to contain a single character if it was pushed as empty, but not exactly sure that's the route I would want to go, might need to look at how it is handled later, like when brought back to the product after clicking on the item in the cart, does it contain the new single character or is it removed?