I am dealing with a product that is totally dynamic in nature and am using a completely custom controller/page to handle things.
There are a bunch of various custom entities I've built to handle the various business models that handle product logic. On my custom page, I assemble all these options into a form that allow a user to add this unique configuration to the cart.
Seeing as each customer's combination of values is likely to be rare (with millions of possible combinations), it is not practical to create a new catalog product each time someone adds to cart. Additionally, the product's image will be unique for each item, which makes it problematic to have one "generic" instance of my product in the catalog and use that every time it's added to cart.
I've thought a lot about various product types in Magento, and am not really seeing a good fit. Each composite type of product (bundle, configurable, etc) will require many customizations to make it work, so I've been developing based on Simple Products (I add all configured options as additional_options
and set the price in observer during add-to-cart), but I can't help but think this is a good candidate for a custom product type (even if there is only one product in that list).
Given a product type that needs to be configured with a various amount of dimensions, colors, styles, etc, how would you handle this at the product model level?
(I have tried to be clear while at the same time honoring my client's NDA, if my question comes off as too generic, I am happy to clarify).
edit --- For reference, imagine a web site that sells model doll house bits. Each of those bits is it's own product for sale (ie. 4 pack of little model trees, little itty bitty wallpaper, etc) but there is also a feature where a user can build a completely custom doll house, including custom dimensions for the number of floors, area in each room, etc. What product type would you make the "build a custom dollhouse?"