Need some programing advice/suggestions

[torndownunit]

Ok, a client is looking for something similar to a shopping cart:

He does home repairs. He basically wants to have people be able to select what work they would like done on their house from a list of options (and be able to select multiple options). After they select the options, they get a summary page. A page is emailed to the repair guy that he can just print out like a work order to take to the job.

So it's pretty much like a shopping cart, but with no online money transactions or payment methods needed.

I am not sure if I am going to work on the project because I don't do a lot of work like this. I am decent at working with existing scripts, I just can't write anything from scratch. So if there is an existing solution that does something like what he's looking for that I can tweak, I could likely do the job.

So does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Got Josh?]

I believe that some php scripting here won't be that hard, maybe grab a book or a couple of tutorials from anywhere, most php tutorials teach you PHP by showing how to actually do shopping carts and the like. I made something like this for my sister a couple of days ago, it's nothing overall complicated : http://www.grupodina4.com/suscribete.htm

It's in spanish so you probably won't understand much but anyways. Where it says "números anteriores disponibles de future arquitecturas:" if you select any of the checkbox down there, my sister gets exactly that string in the email she gets sent. You might need a slightly more advance solution but you probably have time to develop it. If you need a book, i'll recommend the head first series of PHP & SQL. Keep in mind that you'll need to work with a database in order to deliver the shopping cart.

 

[torndownunit]

Thanks Josh.

There are 2 things that make it a little bit complicated for me. (a) the site will have multiple pages for his services because they are in categories. So it won't be as simple as selecting checkboxes on a single page. In that case, I would have been able to use a form basically. This will need an "add to cart" type function, though it would be more like "add to work order".

(b) The guy doesn't have much computer experience, so he wants to be able to just print what he gets in the email as a work order. Which means it will require some formatting (a logo etc).

Does anyone know of a pretty basic existing Cart script that would work for something like this?

Thanks.

 

[Cabbit]

I think you mite perhaps be looking to develop a application that has a client application installed on your clients computer that essentially has a big print button.
With clients of limited computer knowledge they seem to work better with familiar applications such as Word, so i would be looking to develop the web cart then have all the admin functions operate from a client side application that way you have direct access to the printer and can have a lot more freedom than the web technologies provide for developing the application.