Preorders in Magento Using Attribute Value

Magento doesn’t come built with the ability to place preorders: the closest match is in the form of back orders, but there’s a crucial difference between the two. Backorders are orders placed when stock isn’t present and are shipped as soon as stock becomes available. Preorders however usually have a predefined point at which they will be shipped.

The excellent Aitoc Prorders extension provides a drop-in ability to accept preorders including button text changes, checkout customisation and different order statuses for preorders.

One aspect I had to work around is that the way to define a preorder is by using the extra “Pre-Orders” value of the Magento “Backorders” Inventory field. In my case I wanted to define a preorder to be a product with a Release Date set in the future. Fortunately the Aitc Preorders module has a very discrete function where it holds the definition of a Preorder. Changing this is a simple case of overriding that method

Creating a new extension

You need to create a new standard Magento extension, creating the usual boilerplate files:

• /app/etc/modules/Namespace_Module.xml
• /app/code/local/Namespace/Module/etc/config.xml

Rewrite the Aitoc module’s Product model

In /app/code/local/Namespace/Module/etc/config.xml, set up your XML:

{% codeblock lang:xml] <?xml version=“1.0”?> 0.1.0 Namespace_Module_Model_Aitpreorder_Rewrite_CatalogProduct
{% endcodeblock]

Create the class and override the function

Create the file /app/code/local/Namespace/Module/Model/Aitpreorder/Rewrite/CatalogProduct.php

{% codeblock lang:php]

<?php

class Namespace_Module_Model_Aitpreorder_Rewrite_CatalogProduct extends Aitoc_Aitpreorder_Model_Rewrite_CatalogProduct { public function getPreorder() { // Add whatever logic you like here and return it as a boolean $releaseDate = DateTime::createFromFormat(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’, $this->getReleaseDate()); return $releaseDate > new DateTime(); }

}

{% endcodeblock]