case sensitive: coupons?

[dawyatt]

We are setting up coupons for a few people who will helping us promote our site. They will be given a percentage of each posting they sell. They have been given a coupon code based on their name and the % off a user will get if they enter the unique coupon code.

My question? Is the coupon field case sensitive...? My initial test seemed to indicate that was the case, but it does not seem to be consistance.

Example of a coupon code:

Name of promoter is Julie Roth
Offers customer a 30% discount if they enter in unique code.
Unique code= JRoth 30


Could the problem be spaces in the code? Again, it does not seem to be consistant in my testing...
I am sure it would be easier to just use a numeric code... I like a code the easily identifies my promoter...

Just curious as to anyone's suggestions or solutions...

Thanks...

[juven14]

As a matter of practice I don't use spaces for inputs. You might do something like JRoth-40 or JRoth40 instead of using spaces.

It doesn't convert it to lowercase, and the coupon is compared to the coupons in the database, which uses coupon=coupon, so it should be case-sensitive.

[dawyatt]

Thanks, Juven14,

I think i will use numeric codes as I don't want to slow up the checkout process if a customer enters the code wrong (ie caps/no caps).... or I may consider some type of mod to convert entry....

Thanks for your input.... I appreciate it....

[juven14]

If you'd like I can dig something up to convert user input to lowercase for the coupon comparsion.

EDIT: Here is a solution, if you want it.

Open usercheckout.php and find:
//now see if they entered a coupon
$couponcode=trim(@$_POST['coupon']);

and replace with:
//now see if they entered a coupon
$couponcode=trim(@$_POST['coupon']);
$couponcode = strtolower($couponcode);

This will convert their coupon code to all lowercase and provided you entered the coupon codes via the admin in all lowercase this will match them up.

[dawyatt]

COOOOOOOOLLLLLL !

I will check it out.....

Thank you!

[juven14]

I've just run into this problem myself. The solution I ended up with was to make the cNumber field binary. They are now case-sensitive.

There is a trade off - you will need to input a random number for coupon code via script edit or mysql when creating discounts. Since you can't have duplicate values of ""