I'm currently working on a shop for a customer that sells and rents art. I'm using configurable products that have a rent or buy attribute. Due to the nature of the customer's business you can't rent an object (product) multiple times and you can only buy OR rent a product.

A configurable product consists of 4 simple products (3 for monthly renting options and 1 for buying).

Is there a standard (via configuration) way to prohibit adding one configurable product multiple times to the cart without using the inventory configuration/stock management (currently the scenario only works without deducting quantities from stock/inventory).


Why don't you just use custom options? You could use radio select options and have values (rent1, rent2, buy,...). I believe this would solve the issue more elegantly.

| improve this answer | |
  • Customs options don't have fixed IDs as compared to attributes and since payment options are based on this selection it's safer to use always the same IDs, also due to the nature of customs options they have to be maintained per product and can't be pre-configured. – lars.schwarz Dec 17 '14 at 9:05
  • They have IDs in the back end and you can assign a SKU. There are scripts and modules for batch adding custom options as well as adding them when a product is created. I believe this would still be easier than the configurable product way. – Yorrd Dec 17 '14 at 9:31

Your Answer

