Search for shipping option by zipcode or name

Hi

Is there a way to give the customer the possibility to search for a specific parcel shop from the Shipping provider, when choosing shipping option on an order?

Right now i give my customers the 3 nearest options in relation to their address.
But what if none of these match what the customer want, what can she/he do?

Best regards,
Axel

RE: "i give my customers the 3 nearest options"

How do you do that; do you have a custom  plugin?

Hi,

Yes I have a custom plugin and the shipping provider (GLS) allow us to do searches for shipping options.
I am just looking for a way to implement this in Nop, is there no option to let the customer search for shipping points in Nop?

Best regards,
Axel

No a customer can only select a shipping option from all the options returned from all the Shipping Methods.
You would need to customise the ShippingService to be able to search all the returned shipping options

When you say search by Zipcode  - thats esentially what is happening - normaly the options provided from the shipping methods are based on the From and To Country and Zipcode - the shipping plugins each work out if they can provide the service and the estimate cost

Thanks for your answer.
But what is a customer supposed to do if none of the listed shipping options are what they want?

Do you know if anyone has done customizations like that before?

Customers can be hard to satisfy sometimes - Are you saying you need a plugin that will search all available shipping options in the world based on the criteria provided by the customer ?

Probably you either need to provide enough options so the customer can select one that they are happy with - which maybe hard to do
or Otherwise the customer will need to select one of the options that is provided if they want to continue with purchase

Thank you.

At our current site we only sell to Denmark, so we give the customer access to searching all adresses in Denmark, and select the exact shop they want. They can also choose it by pointing on a map.

I will try to look into the ShippingService.
Is there a way to hook into that from a plugin, or do I need to change the Standard dll?

If you need the customer to have an interactive dialog so that they can search for other locations by entering a postal code, then I suggest your plugin also implement a Widget that subscribes to a zone on the shipping page - e.g.
One page checkout
   PublicWidgetZones.OpCheckoutShippingMethodTop
   PublicWidgetZones.OpCheckoutShippingMethodBottom
Regular checkout
   PublicWidgetZones.CheckoutShippingMethodTop
   PublicWidgetZones.CheckoutShippingMethodBottom

Your Widget will need to use AJAX to call back to your controller to get/return the postal shops.

New York wrote:

Thanks, that might be an idea.
So in my controller I will be able to add the selected shipment to the current order.
This way i dont need to change in any standard shipping service, right?

Best regards,
Axel

AxelAndersen wrote:
Not exactly.  I think for best UX, you need to have your widget use JavaScript/JQuery to 'stuff'  another list item into the form.  Note the HTML on the page - the value of the list option is the concatenation of shipping method name and shipping provider, which is what the core/standard shipping method will be looking for when the customer submits the form

<div class="section shipping-method" id="shipping-methods-form">
    <ul class="method-list">
            <li>
                <div class="method-name">
                    <input id="shippingoption_0" type="radio" name="shippingoption" value="Ground___Shipping.FixedByWeightByTotal" checked="checked">
                    <label for="shippingoption_0">Ground ($0.00)</label>
...
            </li>
...