Copying Product Attributes to Quote & Order Items

Add this to your XML;

<global>
    <sales>
        <quote>
            <item>
                <product_attributes>
                    <location/>
                </product_attributes>
            </item>
        </quote>
    </sales>
</global>

• This makes the product attributes accessible to the Mage_Sales_Model_Quote_Config class’ getProductAttributes() method. This reads in the sales/quote/item/product_attributes node.

• This is called by the _assignProducts method of the Mage_Sales_Model_Resource_Quote_Item_Collection‘s _assignProducts() method, where it adds all of the attributes to the product collection of the quote item collection.

Add the columns to the quote and order item tables

• Create an installer with the following:

  $installer = new Mage_Sales_Model_Resource_Setup('core_setup');
  
  $entities = array(
      'quote_item',
      'order_item'
  );
  
  $options = array(
      // For some reason, VARCHAR works here, whereas elsewhere it must be TYPE_TEXT with a length of 255.
      'type'     => Varien_Db_Ddl_Table::TYPE_VARCHAR,
      'visible'  => true,
      'required' => false
  );
  
  foreach ($entities as $entity) {
      $installer->addAttribute($entity, 'location', $options);
  }
  

• The addAttribute() method of the Mage_Sales_Model_Resource_Setup creates the columns on the quote_item and order_item tables.

Copy the attributes to the quote item

Unlike copying from quote items to order items, there isn’t an XML method to do this – it has to be accomplished through an observer. Add the following to the config (with the observer / method substituted):

<frontend>
    <events>
        <sales_quote_item_set_product>
            <observers>
                <observer_name>
                    <class>model/observer</class>
                    <method>addAttributesToQuoteItem</method>
                </observer_name>
            </observers>
        </sales_quote_item_set_product>
    </events>
</frontend>

Then create the following method for the observer above:

    public function addAttributesToQuoteItem($observer){
        $quoteItem = $observer->getQuoteItem();
        $product = $observer->getProduct();
        $quoteItem->setLocation($product->getLocation());
    }

Note: Values Don’t have to come from the product item

Any arbitrary information could be set on the quote or quote item; it does not have to come from the product itself. E.g. A different type of ship note could be set by a different observer. The associated columns just need to exist on the quote or quote item tables.

Copying quote item attributes to the order item

• This can be achieved with a small amount of XML:

  <global>
    <fieldsets>
        <sales_convert_quote_item>
            <location>
                <to_order_item>*</to_order_item>
            </location>
        </sales_convert_quote_item>
    </fieldsets>
</global>

Note: This will not copy the data to the sales_flat_shipment_item table.

Converting from an order item to other types of item

The following will copy the object’s attributes when converting the quote item back to a quote item, an invoice item, and a credit memo item

<global>
    <fieldsets>
        <sales_convert_order_item>
            <location>
                <to_quote_item>*</to_quote_item>
                <to_invoice_item>*</to_invoice_item>
                <to_cm_item>*</to_cm_item>
            </location>
        </sales_convert_order_item>
    </fieldsets>
</global>

These are used in the Mage_Sales_Model_Convert_Order class’ itemToQuoteItem, itemToInvoiceItem, and itemToCreditmemoItem methods. Note: In default Magento, it does not appear that the itemToQuoteItem is used, so this should be included for third party extensions which may rely on this method.