Create a new Prestashop cart in custom php

Question

In Prestashop, I've created a custom form where I show a list with all products and the user can fill the corresponding quantities. By submitting the form, I clear the cart and fill it with the new values and finally redirect to the checkout page.

Everything's working fine, but only when the cart already exists. In a case of an empty cart (cart_id==null), I cannot add the products. I tried with several ways to create a $cart but I didn't manage to do so.

I don't get any exceptions, the code is executed without errors, it's just that at the end, in the checkout page, the cart remains empty; I repeat, only when the cart was already empty. In the case of a cart with products in it, then the process is just perfect!

I would appreciate some help on this.

Here is my small controller that gets the products and quantities from the form and adds them in the cart:

include('../../config/config.inc.php');
include('../../header.php');

// Filling the array of products
$products = array();
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value)
    if (substr($key, 0, 9) === 'quantity_')
        $products[substr($key, 9)] = $value;

// First of all, we remove all products
$prods = $cart->getProducts();
foreach ($prods as $prod)
    $cart->deleteProduct($prod['id_product']);

// Adding the new products
foreach ($products as $product_id => $quantity)
    if ($quantity > 0)
        $cart->updateQty($quantity, $product_id);

// Redirecting to the checkout page.
header("Location: " . $_POST['redirect']);
exit();`

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

I had the same problem with Prestashop not correctly creating a new cart upon calling the CartCore in many different ways - neither context or direct calls did work out.

Found this gem from someone else over here:

// get cart id if exists
if ($this->context->cookie->id_cart)
{
    $cart = new Cart($this->context->cookie->id_cart);
}

// create new cart if needed
if (!isset($cart) OR !$cart->id)
{
    $cart = new Cart();
    $cart->id_customer = (int)($this->context->cookie->id_customer);
    $cart->id_address_delivery = (int)  (Address::getFirstCustomerAddressId($cart->id_customer));
    $cart->id_address_invoice = $cart->id_address_delivery;
    $cart->id_lang = (int)($this->context->cookie->id_lang);
    $cart->id_currency = (int)($this->context->cookie->id_currency);
    $cart->id_carrier = 1;
    $cart->recyclable = 0;
    $cart->gift = 0;
    $cart->add();
    $this->context->cookie->id_cart = (int)($cart->id);    
    $cart->update();
}

This is working for me now. As you see it goes a little more in depth than just asking the context to retrieve or create a new cart. hth.