There are many old tutorials which are out of date and simply do not work. We have tested this solution with Magento version 1.5 and 1.7. Free sample products or free tester products are ideal for e-commerce websites that require giving their customers for example tester materials or sample perfumes for instance.

You can restrict the amount of free sample products you want give out to your clients because you do not want people to have let’s just say a 100 free sample products. instead this tutorial will restrict the sample product to 5 but you can edit the code you change it to whatever you feel is the right amount.

1. Firstly you will need to create a file called getSample.php in the root of your Magento installation folder and populate it with the following code.

001 <?php
002
003 ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
004 error_reporting(E_ALL);
005
006 //print_r($_POST);
007
008 require_once ‘app/Mage.php’;
009 Mage::app();
010
011
012
013 Mage::getSingleton(“core/session”, array(“name” => “frontend”));
014 Mage::getSingleton(‘core/session’)->setSampleError(“”);
015 // Store users session
016 $session = Mage::getSingleton(“customer/session”);
017
018 //Store cart items
019 $totalNumOfCartItem = Mage::getModel(‘checkout/cart’)->getItemsQty();
020
021 //Store cart items
022 $theitems = Mage::getModel(‘checkout/cart’)->getItems();
023
024 $thecount = 0;
025
026 foreach($theitems as $ti){
027
028 $thename = $ti['name'];
029
030 $test = strpos($thename,’Free Sample’);
031
032 if($test !== false){
033 $thecount = $thecount+1;
034 }
035
036 }
037
038 if(isset($_POST['name'])){
039 $name = $_POST['name'];
040
041 $id = $_POST['id'];
042 if(isset($_POST['simpleid']) && !empty($_POST['simpleid'])){
043 $simpleid = $_POST['simpleid'];
044 }
045 }
046 if(isset($_GET['name'])){
047 $name = $_GET['name'];
048 if(isset($_GET['simpleid']) && !empty($_GET['simpleid'])){
049 $simpleid = $_GET['simpleid'];
050 }
051 $id = $_GET['id'];
052 }
053
054 // retrict shopping cart to only allow 5 samples
055 if ($totalNumOfCartItem <= 4)
056 {
057 $theproduct = Mage::getModel(‘catalog/product’)->load($id);
058
059 if($simpleid){
060 $thesimple = Mage::getModel(‘catalog/product’)->load($simpleid);
061 }
062
063 if($thecount < 2){
064
065 // instatiate Product
066 $product = Mage::getModel(‘catalog/product’);
067 if($simpleid){
068 $product->setSku($thesimple->getSku().”*”.rand());
069 } else {
070 $product->setSku($theproduct->getSku().”*”.rand());
071 }
072 $product->setName(“Sample of “.$name);
073 // $product->setDescription(“Sample of “.$name);
074 $product->setShortDescription($name.” – Sample”);
075 $product->setPrice(00.00);
076 $product->setTypeId(‘simple’);
077
078 $product->setImageUrl($theproduct->getImageUrl()); // set the images from the original product
079 $product->setThumbnailUrl($theproduct->getImageUrl());
080 $product->setImage($theproduct->getSmallImage());
081 $product->setMediaGallery (array(‘images’=>array (), ‘values’=>array ()));
082 $product->addImageToMediaGallery($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].”/media/catalog/product”.$theproduct->getSmallImage(), array(‘image’,'small_image’,'thumbnail’), false, false);
083 $product->setAttributeSetId(9); // need to look this up
084 $product->setCategoryIds(“15″); // need to look these up
085 $product->setWeight(21212121.21);
086 $product->setTaxClassId(2); // taxable goods
087 $product->setVisibility(1); // catalog, search
088 $product->setStatus(1); // enabled
089 // assign product to the default website
090 $product->setWebsiteIds(array(Mage::app()->getStore(true)->getWebsite()->getId()));
091
092
093 // get product’s general info such price, status, description
094
095 $stockData = $product->getStockData();
096
097 // update stock data using new data
098 $stockData['qty'] = 1;
099 $stockData['is_in_stock'] = 1;
100 $stockData['manage_stock'] = 1;
101 $stockData['max_sale_qty'] = 5;
102
103 // then set product’s stock data to update
104 $product->setStockData($stockData);
105 //die();
106
107 // call save() method to save your product with updated data
108 $product->save();
109
110
111 header(“Location: /checkout/cart/add/product/”.$product->getId().”/”);
112 }
113 }
114
115 else
116 {
117 Mage::getSingleton(‘checkout/session’)->addError(“You are only allowed a maximum of 5 sample products”);
118
119 header(“Location: /checkout/cart”);
120 }
121 ?>

The above code is simply the function which will create sample products for you on the fly. Also not that in this example we have assigned each sample product with a ridiculous weight because the client offered the sample product and the shipping of the sample products for free meaning we had to create a table rate for the shipping method which did not interfere with the other shipping logic so that anything that exceeds 21212121 will have free shipping.

2. Next you will need to create a button where you want people to add a free sample product in the shopping basket. I have placed my sample button in the list.phtml and placed the button in both my list view and grid view.

 
1 <form action=”/getSample.php” method=”post”>
2 <input type=”hidden” name=”id” value=”<?php echo $_product->getId() ?>” />
3 <input type=”hidden” name=”name” value=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>” />
4 <input type=”image” name=”getsample” alt=”Get Sample for <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>” src=”<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl(‘images/your_theme_name/sample-btn.jpg’) ?>” />
5 </form>

The above will execute the getSample.php and add a sample product to your shopping basket whilst still allowing you to purchase other products from the Magento shop.