Magento – Persistent Shopping Cart and Guest / Anonymous Users

cookiemagento-1.9persistentshopping-cart

Our site does not use accounts or logins, so basically all of our users go through guest checkout.

I was under the impression that the "Persistent Shopping Cart" does exactly that – saves the contents of the cart even for users who do not register.

So if an anonymous user comes to the site, adds items to the cart and leaves, his cookie is still saved in case he returns to the site.

Apparently I was mistaken – after further reading the documentation I understand that the feature is used more towards accessing the cart from multiple devices while logged on and persisting the cart.

So now, assuming I want to ANONYMOUS, GUEST users to be able to return to the site and maintain their previous cart state, what is the best way to do that?

Should I just extend the session cookie to a year? I'm not sure what are the consequences of doing that if that's the best /easiest way?

Thank you!

Best Answer

The time duration for which Item saved into cart depends on two parameters

Magento Admin: System -> Configuration -> Web -> Session Cookie Management Cookie Lifetime
PHP.ini - session.gc_maxlifetime

Here your Session Cookie Management Cookie Lifetime should be less than the session.gc_maxlifetime.

The session.gc_maxlifetime will be honored first and then cookie lifetime.

So once the session is expired the cart will be emptied.

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Magento – persistent shopping cart disadvantages

@Marius while you would expect that to be logical in reality there is an edge case where the guest checkout option is disabled.

Replication

Logged in customer adds items to basket
Customer closes browsers
Website session times out kill var/session directory
Customer opens browser adds items to basket as guest.
Guest checkout it hidden.

Cause

An event called checkout_allow_guest is fired by Mage_Checkout_Helper_Data::isAllowedGuestCheckout()

This then observed by Mage_Persistent_Model_Observer::disableGuestCheckout() which disables the option to use guest checkout.

The cause of which is that the session is loaded by Mage_Persistent_Helper_Session::isPersistent() with the value of the persistence cookie:

    if (is_null($key)) {
        $key = Mage::getSingleton('core/cookie')->get(Mage_Persistent_Model_Session::COOKIE_NAME);
    }

Fix - Disabled event observer

You will need to create a new module with two files.

app/code/local/JZah/AllowPersistentGuestCheckout/etc/config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <modules>
        <JZah_AllowPersistentGuestCheckout>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </JZah_AllowPersistentGuestCheckout>
    </modules>
    <frontend>
        <events>
            <checkout_allow_guest>
                <observers>
                    <persistent>
                        <type>disabled</type>
                    </persistent>
                </observers>
            </checkout_allow_guest>
        </events>
    </frontend>
</config>

app/etc/modules/JZah_AllowPersistentGuestCheckout.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <modules>
        <JZah_AllowPersistentGuestCheckout>
            <active>true</active>
            <codePool>local</codePool>
            <depends>
                <Enterprise_Persistent/>
            </depends>
        </JZah_AllowPersistentGuestCheckout>
    </modules>
</config>

Created for Magento EE 1.14.1.0

Magento 1.9 – Does Persistent Shopping Cart Work for Guest Visitors?

That's how I thought it should work as well (see also: What does "Persistent Shopping Cart" do?)

But after inspecting the code, you are right, the persistent_shopping_cart cookie is only set on login and logout, and used for the "remember me" feature to automatically log in customers.

So the feature does not quite live up to its promises and I am not sure if this is intentional or a bug.

Best Answer

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Magento – persistent shopping cart disadvantages

Magento 1.9 – Does Persistent Shopping Cart Work for Guest Visitors?

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