Role of is_active in sales_flat_quote?

Question

Can anyone shade some light on the real usage of is_active field in sales_flat_quote table?

AFAIK, is_active field is used in the following cases:

• is_active is always 1 for cart/quote created by web user
• is_active is always 0 for cart/quote created from admin
• To load quote by Customer Id, is_active = 1 is taken into account
• When quote is converted to order, is_active becomes 0
• To restore the quote which is cleared by payment errors etc during checkout., make is_active = 1
• When you create a quote via API, is_active is always 0 (not sure why?)

My Questions:

• I would like to know if the above bullet points are correct?
• Why is_active is always 0 for quote created via API?
• How to get quote items by customer id / email via API?

Answer 1

Your all bullet points are correct. When customer add product to cart that time cart detect only active quote and when you pass third party payment solution it's need only active quote to detect customer's quote. So in that case you need to implement same feature. If you create a quote and didn't inactive this quote and if customer login then he/she can see the cart item into cart.So if you need customer quote then you need to check active only.

Another point, If you check sales_flat_order 'quote_id' column and sales_flat_quote 'entity_column' inner join, If not found then this quote is abandoned. But this can work only certain period of data because by default magento delete qoute through cron after certain period.