RE: Shopping Cart w/o Cookies

by "Leland V. Lammert" <lvl(at)omnitec.net>

Date:	Sun, 16 Apr 2000 13:24:23 -0700
To:	<ehoffman(at)smalldogdesign.com>, "Michael Ricker" <staff(at)managementspecialties.com>, <hwg-business(at)hwg.org>
References:	pair
	todo: View Thread, Original

At 05:32 AM 4/15/00 , Eric J Hoffman wrote:
>Maybe I'm missing something here...but if you go completely cookieless, how
>does the cart maintain state?  You can't rely on IP address as AOL users and
>several other very large ISPs have a new IP address darn near every new page
>request.  Something I'm missing?

Eric,

Yes you have missed something, .. it's called a form variable [most often hidden]. It is a trivial task to pass the shopping cart ID as a hidden form field value from one page to the next. This avoids *all* problems with users accepting cookies, .. cookie filters, etc. 

The only downside is that the 'state' cannot be maintained from one session to the next, i.e. when the user starts over they get a new shopping cart. Not a problem for a cart itself, .. but obviously this mething cannot be used to maintain ID information from one session to the next.

         Lee
============================================
    Leland V. Lammert                                lvl(at)omnitec.net
       Chief Scientist                         Omnitec Corporation
   Network/Internet Consultants              www.omnitec.net
============================================

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