Well i was thinking of using cron, but that would relatively crude
The current switching mechanism is crude too, as it involves writing 1/0 to a text file
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Schedule on/off with text-based ruleset
I'm looking for something i could use in order to turn on/off ecommerce capabilties on a website according to a set of rules. Is there perhaps something i could leverage to do this, perhaps from open source software where time/date based rules are used?
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Answers
Crude, but does it work?
If you want something more complex, you can always write a 'cron' script that runs every 10-15 minutes that looks at a rules file to determine what it should do (rather than a cron job at midnight to turn it off and another at 3 am to turn it on, the script could look at various other metrics, etc. to decide if it should turn on or off now or later, etc).
I think, to answer your original question, no. There's no open source solution that meets your specific needs, but from you've described, you should be able to write your own rather easily.
Again, more details are needed.
As memws1 said, you need to provide details.
What is the problem with writing 1/0 to a text file? Would you rather write this to a database? If so, there are perl modules (DBI) to make interfacing with a database very easy. If not a text file nor a database, what would you like to use? Do you want to shut down the webserver? Server a completly different ("come back later") type of site? If using apache, you could have 2 httd.conf (or apache2.conf), and run apach2ctl reload to have it run the appropriate site.
Instead of cron, would you prefer a daemon?
inlineACL plugin for managing access controls
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Using the plugin, lets say you want to display a link to only those who are not logged in, all those who are logged in will not see it:
Well there's not much more to tell you. The present cart software, afaik, only implements shop on/off with a define in the php configuration file.
This is crude since it's non-transacional and it's quite conceivable that the shop could be turned off in the middle of a purchase, so yes, it would be much better to have this implemented in the database.
As far as the timing is concerned, cron too is crude, but that's what i'm using at the moment. I guess i'm fishing around for bright ideas.
Deane10, i might be missing something, but i don't see the relevance of your comment
I know you've already selected some answers, so maybe you have a working solution. But if not, here is a suggestion.
When someone starts shopping (starts a new "cart"), start a session for them - giving them a session cookie. As long as they have a session cookie, let them finish their transaction. When you want to shut down the site, stop giving out new sessions. This way, if someone is in the middle of a transaction, they get to finish. But new users do not get started.
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by: nemws1Posted on 2009-09-09 at 07:04:14ID: 25291388
Just an FYI, your question is rather open-ended, thus it will be difficult for any expert to respond.
Can you describe for us what is involved with turning on/off the ecommerce capabilities on your website? What OS are you running?
At this point, all any of us would be able to say is something along the lines of.. yes, you can do this (you can do most anything - it just takes time and money :-} ). I'm thinking there's an answer using 'cron', but you might be running Windows, where the solution would be similar, but different.
Again, please provide more info - be as specific and provide as many details as possible.