Create Your Own Mini Cart From Scratch

Creating your own program to display a mini cart in a ShopSite Pro store requires technical expertise in some programming language, but it can give the flexibility that can't be achieved in any other way. This page explains where the cart information comes from and exactly what that information is; after that, you're on your own.

Note:

Shopsite, Inc. may add more information for the mini cart in future product versions. If you create your own mini cart, be sure to check this help page when new versions are available to see if anything has changed.

Where Does the Information Come From?

ShopSite uses a browser cookie to store the information for the mini cart. When a customer first arrives at a ShopSite store -- before they have been to the shopping cart page -- they do not have the browser cookie, so your code should detect that situation and act appropriately. Once they add a product to the cart or view the cart, ShopSite sets the cookie in their browser. From then on, the cookie is updated any time there is a change to the cart. When the customer completes a purchase, the cookie is deleted.

What Information Is In the Cookie?

The cart cookie contains all of the information used by the mini cart, with the fields separated by the pipe symbol ( | ), like this:

The cookie information is:

Field	Format	Description
Cookie Name	ss_cart_serialnum	Where serialnum is the serial number of the store. This prevents one store from reading the values from another store.
Cookie Expiration		The expiration date for the cookie matches the number of days that the merchant has set to keep unfinished shopping carts.
Field 1	LineCnt:n	The number of line items in the cart. Basically, this number reflects the number of different products in the cart, but not the quantity of products. This number does not count any coupons. Note that if a customer adds the same product twice to the cart, it will be counted as 2 line items.
Field 2	QntyTotal:n	The total number of items in the cart. This is the sum of the quantities of all line items.
Field 3	SubTotal:$nnn.nn	The cost of the products, minus the value of any coupons applied. This number does not include tax, shipping, or surcharges.
Fields 4+	Qty:Price:Name	There is one field for each line item in the cart. Each field contains the quantity, the total cost for that line item (price times quantity), and the product name, separated by colons (:).

Field

Format

Description

Cookie Name

ss_cart_serialnum

Where serialnum is the serial number of the store. This prevents one store from reading the values from another store.

Cookie Expiration

The expiration date for the cookie matches the number of days that the merchant has set to keep unfinished shopping carts.

Field 1

LineCnt:n

The number of line items in the cart. Basically, this number reflects the number of different products in the cart, but not the quantity of products. This number does not count any coupons. Note that if a customer adds the same product twice to the cart, it will be counted as 2 line items.

Field 2

QntyTotal:n

The total number of items in the cart. This is the sum of the quantities of all line items.

Field 3

SubTotal:$nnn.nn

The cost of the products, minus the value of any coupons applied. This number does not include tax, shipping, or surcharges.

Fields 4+

Qty:Price:Name

There is one field for each line item in the cart. Each field contains the quantity, the total cost for that line item (price times quantity), and the product name, separated by colons (:).

ShopSite Help and Resource Center
February 13, 2004
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