Prompting for postal code in basket

[swpierce]

If I wanted to add a piece to the basket that prompts for a postal code if there isn't one (such as if they are not logged in, or if they are logged in but have no address associated with them), will I need to extend the controller to handle that or can it be done in a more simple manner?

For example, user views the basket and there is not postal code we can use, so a line shows up that says "Please enter your postal code to estimate shipping charges." If they don't, we'll get it during checkout. If they do, we can use our API and give them a very close estimate of what their shipping is going to be.

Thanks again for all the help and answering all my "duh" questions.

[aimeos]

For example, user views the basket and there is not postal code we can use, so a line shows up that says "Please enter your postal code to estimate shipping charges." If they don't, we'll get it during checkout. If they do, we can use our API and give them a very close estimate of what their shipping is going to be.

I would use a standard shipping charge as long as customers don't enter their address during the checkout. The delivery page in the checkout process can rely on an address being there for shipping calculation as long as you don't change the checkout to a one pager. Your proposal is possible to implement with an additional subpart but customers don't expect being asked for a postal code in the basket ...

[swpierce]

Makes sense. I've used quite a few sites where there is an option to estimate shipping prior to going through the checkout process, but I've used just as many sites where there's not.

What we decided to do is to make the user registration process include setting a default address. If the user is logged in when they view the basket, we will just lookup the default address and use that postal code. If no user is logged in, we will just use an arbitrary postal code that is a few shipping zones away from the warehouse.

Thanks!