Need suggestion: Shopping Cart with Dynamic Pricing Input

[theo]

I am looking for a shopping cart that will be able to handle dynamic pricing input. I operate a printing division of our media services company in which we provide custom sized prints of peoples pictures. I am using Merchant Order Form (http://www.merchantorderform.com) as our shopping cart since it allows us to dynamically calculate the product pricing based upon the print's length and width with javascript.
THe problem we have is that while merchant order form generates product pricing and description based how you input your buy button, the shopping cart only provides limited capabilities when it comes to credit card processing and order processing. Credit cards have to be manually processed or the shopper has to tell it after the checkout process the authorize their credit card transaction. After that we do not have any admin section to process order from therefore have to print out the e-mail an order generates and base production off of the e-mail.

Basically I am looking a shopping cart system (PHP preferred) that has the normal bells and whistles but will allow for a dynamically created product listing or be able to calculate pricing based upon a products dimensions. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Corey Bryant]

Are you wanting your own hosted solution or someone else to host it? Have you also checked out www.oscommerce.com & their contributions?

[theo]

Hello Corey,
Yes, actually I had throught about Oscommerce. I have used it quite a bit for other sites and usually go with that program for web clients that want a shopping cart. The two problems I have with using Oscommerce is that there are no contributions for such (aleady looked). I could input every possible dimension into the product listing database but that leads to other problems. Pricing for the prints are totally based upon the square inch of the print they order. I am not a good enough PHP programmer to make the contribution myself so am basically looking for an alternative, but something with as many features as Oscommerce.

If it helps: the product dimensions range from 8 inches to 48 inches in length and width. I ahve not done the math but when you add options like framing and other dimension based options then the number of possible product listings becomes astonomical and not very practicle for a database.

[Corey Bryant]

Myself I do not deal with PHP, but only ASP.. Have you thought about maybe posting a listing to ask someone to build that for you? Since you are already familiar with osCommerce & you like it, it seems that might be the easiest way to go.

[theo]

Actually I wish I could bring everything into ASP but right now am stuck with PHP and MySQL.

When I migrate the site over to a in-house server then we probably will go the ASP route.

The biggest problem I seem to run across with most shopping carts when it comes to our needs is that all products are usually listed in a database. THis is ideal for a retail environment but for a manufacturer that offers custom products it is not real practicle.

[Lee Dev of PSC e-c for m2]

I have a product call Parametric Shopping Cart-PSC that allows you to generate unlimited questions (can be #, alpha numeric, or drop down), rules on what is allowed in the answers, use entered math to compute selling price, shipping cost, & tax (coupled to the credit processing). It also has interrelationship option checking. Example if no packing charge the ship method must be hold for pickup.

My background is manufacturing and have done system in client server that I have converted to the web now.

It is MS .net C#.

The next development is a portal where prospects can select a product, 3 vendors , answer the specifications, then with web services send the request to the PSC shopping carts, returns the prices and let the prospect place the order.

[dark one]

look at http://x-cart.com/
php & mysql and they have what you need. i've built shops doing such things. my clients are happy.