RE: custom pricing routines using [perl] and [discount]

[Tim Shea <tim@valutech.net>]

Hi All,

Okay [perl arg=scratch interpolate=1] helped, now [scratch DiscountFormula] 
returns correctly, but the discount still isn't getting set, returning the 
same errors.

Cheers,
Tim

-----Original Message-----
From:	Tim Shea [SMTP:tim@valutech.net]
Sent:	Sunday, June 27, 1999 11:09 AM
To:	'minivend-users@minivend.com'
Subject:	custom pricing routines using [perl] and [discount]

******    message to minivend-users from Tim Shea <tim@valutech.net> 
    ******

Hi All,

Thank you Christian and Betty for your help. I'm going to list my problem
and non-working solution - perhaps someone's already invented this wheel.
(I am running v3.14 on NT/IIS, and plan on serving it with v3.14 on
Linux/Apache.)

Problem:

I would like to define quantity discounts to products based upon fractions
and multiples of case quantities. For example, product MMS-0120 comes in
cases of 12, so I'd like to offer breaks at 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 96, and
540 (a full pallet). Product MMS-0180 comes in cases of 8, so I'd like to
offer breaks at 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 240. As can be seen, I'd soon have a
pricing.asc database with 100+ columns, with most pricing data just a copy
of the cell to the left.

Partial solution:

Create a new database, prices.asc with two tab-delimited columns: code and
prices. The code column contains the product code. The prices column
contains all of the quantity pricing information, with quantity/price pairs 
comma-delimited, and the quantity and price pair colon-delimited. For
example:

code              prices
MMS-0120     1:9.99,3:8.99,6:7.99,12:5.99
MMS-0180     1:14.99,4:13.99,8:9.99,16:8.99,32:8.49,64:7.99,240:5.99

The perl code I've managed to hack together creates a scalar which contains 
the perl code which should work (I think) within the [discount][/discount]
tagset:
my $returnprice;
if ($q > 0) {
	$returnprice = "9.99";
}
if ($q > 2) {
	$returnprice = "8.99";
}
if ($q > 5) {
	$returnprice = "7.99";
}
if ($q > 11) {
	$returnprice = "5.99";
}
return $returnprice;

(Yes, I am aware that I should reverse the @pricepairs split and do
elsif's, which I will do when I get this to work - that's how I had
originally coded it, but I'm trying to reduce the problem to it's simplest
form. As everyone can probably tell, I'm new to Perl, but I'm usually able
to figure anything out through reading the books - Programming Perl and
Perl Cookbook are sitting in front of me - and trial and error. In fact, as 
I spent 30 minutes writing and editing this email I must have tried at
least 20 additional variations that came to mind.)

Here is the code on my flypage.html:
[set name=PricingData interpolate=1][data base="prices" field="prices"
key="[item-code]"][/set]
[scratch PricingData]
[perl interpolate=1]
	my $numitems;
	my $numprice;
	my $pricepair;
	my $pricingdata = '[scratch PricingData]';
	my $debugstring = $pricingdata;
	my @pricepairs = split /,/ , $pricingdata;
	my $displaystring = "";
	my $pricestring = "my \$returnprice;\n";
	foreach $pricepair (@pricepairs) {
		($numitems, $numprice) = split /:/, $pricepair;
		$displaystring = $numitems . "\@" . "\$" . $numprice . " each; " .
$displaystring;
		--$numitems;
		$pricestring .= "if (\$q > $numitems) {\n \$returnprice =
\"$numprice\";\n } \n";
	}
	$pricestring .= "return \$returnprice; \n";
	$Safe{'scratch'}->{'DisplayString'} = $displaystring;
	$Safe{'scratch'}->{'DiscountFormula'} = $pricestring;
	return $pricestring . "::::" . $debugstring;
[/perl]
[discount [item-code]][scratch DiscountFormula][/discount]
DF:[scratch DiscountFormula]

The final return (within [perl][/perl] shows $pricestring and $debugstring
exactly as expected - the formula (although the \n's seem to be stripped
out) and the pricing data from prices.asc.
The DF: shows blank
I also tried setting the discount directly within the [perl][/perl] tags,
both of the following:
	$Safe{'session'}->{'discount'}->{{$item}->[item-code]} = $pricestring;
and
	$Safe{'session'}->{'discount'}->{{item-code]} = $pricestring;
- I picked these out of Interpolate.pm

This is what I get in the MiniVend error.log when I load the flypage:
Discount for MMS-0120 has bad formula. Not applied.
Can't locate object method "scratch" via package "PricingData" at (eval
292) line 5.

Discount for MMS-0120 has bad formula. Not applied.
Can't locate object method "scratch" via package "PricingData" at (eval
294) line 5.

Discount for MMS-0120 has bad formula. Not applied.
Can't locate object method "scratch" via package "PricingData" at (eval
296) line 5.

Discount for MMS-0120 has bad formula. Not applied.
Can't locate object method "scratch" via package "PricingData" at (eval
298) line 5.

Any and all help, comments, and suggestions greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Tim
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