please help me, i need an intelligent script

[sozz]

Hey, im new here and i have tried searching without any luck so please dont kill me if the answer is out there.

A mate and i are about to make a website where small shops can make a free webshop thorugh our system. Since a lot of the shops are selling the same articles we are trying to make an intelligent catalogue. By this I mean; when the user inserts new items into his catalogue, the system will automatically guess the item details if another user already has entered the same item. eg. if one user enters: 1,5 liter coca cola
once another other user wants to add the same item to his webshop the system will automatically come up with a list of items that matches, so when he enters "1,5 lit...." a list of items mathing this pops up.
Kinda like the way g-mail works when you enter an email address.

i hope you can help me :)

[djr33]

well... basing it on words is a bad idea... that'll just give words that match, not items.

you'd be better off doing it like amazon... "people who bought this also bought"...


basically... just cross reference stuff with a database.

the coding would be intense.


if you're planning to code your own store, just dive in though... it'll be hard, but you gotta just go for it.

security is a much bigger issue than what other stuff you'll link them to, though.

[sozz]

thanks for the reply, i think you misunderstood me though. i ment when the person sets up the webshop it could be helpful if the system guessed the items, if they already exists in the database. The systems is mainly made for small supermarket, providing them the ability to sell ther articles online. Therefore the items will, in many cases, have the same name, but a different price, and therefor it would be a helpful if the system could guess already existing items.

your are right about the project is enormous, at first we didnt realize how much work there is in coding our own store, but once we got started we started realizing :)

[djr33]

Guessing based on name is a bad idea. Do what you want, but it isn't effecient.

"Apple" and "Apron" will be more related than "Apple" and "Orange", etc.
"Strawberry" and "Straw" more than "Strawberry" and "Blueberry".

Yeah... coding your own store is darn near insane. I mean... are you doing credit cards? That's such a security thing! But... go for it if you're up to it.


As for your thing... just cross reference them. Just figure out what's related by hits to the same thing... if a user checks out one thing, then another, maybe they're related. Or if they buy them both... or something.
Or, you could, I guess, hand code in the links.. a bit of time, but just typing keywords.

so... just find a way to relate them, then use that data in the database to find similar stuff.

[sozz]

yeah i see your point... thanks for you help

[sozz]

but yeah im doing credit card too... but luckely my mate has been dealing with that a couple of times before, so at least he has some experience :)

[djr33]

Cool. Sounds like you know what you're doing then... just realize this won't be the end of the complex stuff, heh. "this is just the beginning" :eek: