International Shipping

Here is how I created different shipping rates for international shipping. 

Create a custom shipping module using Inchoo Custome shipping and change the shipping rate based on cart's total weight.

$quote = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getQuote();
$shippingCountryId = $quote-> getShippingAddress () -> getCountryId ();
$weight = 0;
$cartItems = $quote->getAllVisibleItems();
foreach ($cartItems as $item) {
$weight += ($item->getWeight() * $item->getQty()) ;
        }
        if ($shippingCountryId != 'IN'){
$freeBoxes+= $weight * xxx; // xxx = international shipping rate per kg.
}

        $this->setFreeBoxes($freeBoxes);
     

Creating Custom Option for bulk product upload

I had faced many issues while writing code to upload products in bulk. One of the major challenge was to create custom option. Below is what I did. But I still need to open each products and save again for that to be visible on front end. Any solution will be much appreciated.

> this adds a dropdown option
> option is given in below format(in csv file)
     Option1|Option2|Option3
>if there is price difference for each options, the format would be,
     Option1|Option2-100|Option3-200

CODE:

if($csv[$oc]!=''){ //$oc is the colum where option value is saved in csv file.
$valarray = array();
$iv = 0;
$so = 1;
foreach(explode('|',$csv[$oc]) as $oval){
$divided = explode('-',$oval);

$sku = strtoupper($title[$oc].'-'.$divided[0]);
if($divided[1]==''){
$price=0;
}else{
$price=$divided[1];
}
$valarray[$iv] = array(
'is_delete'     => 0,
'title'         => $divided[0],
'price_type'    => 'fixed',
'price'         => $price,
'sku'           => $sku,
'option_type_id'=> -1,
'sort_order' => $so,
);
$iv += 1;
$so += 1;
}
$optionData = array(
  'previous_group' => 'text',
  'title' => $title[$oc],
  'type' => 'drop_down',
  'is_require' => 1,
  'sort_order' => $oc,
//   'price' => 0,
  'price_type' => 'fixed',   
'values'            => $valarray

)
;
$option = Mage::getModel('catalog/product_option')
 ->setProductId($product->getId())
 ->setStoreId($product->getStoreId())
 ->addData($optionData);
try{
$option->save();
$product->addOption($option);
}
catch(Exception $ex){
print_r('Cound not save option');
}

$product['status']=2;
try{
$product->save();

}
catch(Exception $ex){
print_r('Cound not SAVE option');
}
$product->setHasOptions(1); 
$product->save();
}



Another issue that occurred was ending up creating option for products that did not require option. (Later I  solved it by adding the first if clause and setting hasoption to 1 for only the products that required it ). How ever i could not find a way to delete options which was created unnecessarily.  So I ended up changing is_require option to 0 in the catalog_product_option table (directly editing from mysql database tables).

 update catalog_product_option set is_require=0 where product_id>xxx and product_id < yyy;

You also need to set hasoption to 0 for all the products that was created. Fortunately it was all for a single category of products for me.

$_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(xxx); // xxx = category id
$catname     = $_category->getName();
    $collection = $_category->getProductCollection();
     $collection->addAttributeToSelect('*');
$result = array();
foreach ($collection as $_product) { 

$_prod = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($_product->getId());
 $_prod->setHasOptions(0);

$_prod->save();
}