No login form for ecommerce site

[dmx1]

Hi Larry,

On page 168 in the first version of your ecommerce book, you said that you won't have a login form, like the first project.

You also said that there will be no session id's, and instead by storing the  customer's shopping cart contents and wish-list items in the database, the customer can leave and return and still have the previous actions recorded and available without ever logging in.

My query is, "the customer can leave and return and still have the previous actions recorded and available without ever logging in", only applies if the customer is returning to the same computer, and taking into account that nobody else has used the same computer to add products to their own wishlist or shopping cart.

Whereas with a login form, all the user has to do is login with their details, and all of their personalised information, ie saved shopping carts, will automatically return, regardless of how many users have used the same computer to browse and store their own items in their own shopping carts, and their saved history can be accessed remotely.

 

Also, if the user goes to a completely random computer, their saved shopping cart or wish list items will not be visible or recorded. They will only be visible or recorded from the computer where they saved their items, and that's considering no one else has overridden their saved items, by adding their own.

 

So:

 

1) Is their a way that a user's shopping cart and wish list history can be saved, and re-called from any random computer, and not be overridden if someone else decides to use the same computer to store their own items, because I want an amazon style shopping cart where the user can access their saved shopping cart and wish list history from any computer.

 

2) If the answer is no for question 1, how hard would it be to implement the login form from the 1st project into the 2nd ecommerce project?

 

I hope my understanding is correct.

regards

Devon

[Larry]

Yes, your understanding of the pros and cons of this scenario is correct. As for your questions...

1) The only way I know of or can imagine that being possible is by adding login functionality. When the user goes from browser A to browser B, they need to somehow tell the site "I am the same person". 

2) Not hard at all! Part of the design of the two applications in the book was so you could take pieces you liked from either when creating your own solution. Here you'd take the login/logout functionality, plus the additional user database table and implement that within the new site. Then you need to tie the logged-in user to the tracking session. You'd still use cookies but in the database you'd associate the cookie value with a specific user. 

Let me know if you have additional questions!