Option Specials for OpenCart — a special price on a single option value

Option Specials for OpenCart puts a special on a single option value. A “128 GB” phone sells at its usual price while “256 GB” is on sale; a T-shirt is cheaper in red than in other colours; gift wrapping is free this week. Out of the box OpenCart cannot do this: its special changes the price of the whole product, and an option surcharge in the product form is always one fixed number.

A special is set on an option value in one of two ways: a new surcharge (with + or −) or a percentage off the regular surcharge. On the product page the shopper sees the new price, the old one struck through and a -N% badge, and in the cart and the order the special price sits right in the product line — no separate “discount” line — so taxes, the total, the invoice and the amount paid match what the shopper saw. The module does not edit OpenCart core files and never rewrites option prices in your catalogue. One licence, three builds: OpenCart 4.x, 3.x and 2.3.

What the buyer sees

• The new price where the shopper looks for it. The theme prints the special surcharge in brackets next to the value, and the module adds the old one struck through and a red -N% badge. In a drop-down (select) it reads: “Name (+new) — was +old, -N%”.
• An honest badge. The percentage comes from the two visible prices, not from raw figures in the database, so -51% on the page really is 51% off what is shown.
• A cart without surprises. The unit price in the cart is already the special one, and the sub-total and taxes follow it. The shopper never sees the price “jump back” on the way to checkout.
• How much was saved. Optionally a line “Option specials take X off this cart” appears above the cart items.

What the admin gets

Extensions → Modules → Option Specials, three tabs: “Option specials”, “Settings” and “Licence”.

• Product search by name or model — only products that have options are listed.
• The value grid. Pick a product and see all its option values (select, radio, checkbox) with the regular surcharge, each with “Add rule”. A rule is a type (“New price” or “Discount, %”), an amount or a percentage, and in Pro a customer group, priority and dates.
• Checks before saving. A non-numeric or negative price, a discount over 100%, an end date before the start — the module names the value with the error and saves nothing.
• Protection against a stale page. If the product’s rules were changed in another tab, saving from the old page is refused — the module asks you to reopen the product instead of silently overwriting someone else’s changes.
• A list of products with specials with “values with rules” and “rules on” counters, bulk delete and a “Clean up” button that removes rules of values you deleted from the product form.
• Display settings: show the old price, the -N% badge, the saving in the cart; load the module styles or style everything in your own theme.

Pro: customer groups, dates, priority

• Customer group. A separate special price for retail, wholesale or any other group — or one for everyone.
• Schedule. A start and an end date, both inclusive: set up a weekend special in advance and it switches on and off by itself.
• Several rules per value. For example, 20% off for everyone and 35% off for wholesale. The rule with the lower priority wins, and on a tie the lower price — as with OpenCart product specials.
• No limit on the number of values on special.

How it works — step by step

1. You pick a product and set a rule on an option value: a new surcharge or a percentage off.
2. On the product page the module puts the special surcharge into the option data the theme receives from OpenCart — so the theme prints the new price itself, and the module only adds the old price and the badge.
3. At the start of every storefront request the module checks whether the shop has at least one active rule. If not, nothing happens.
4. If it does, the module builds OpenCart’s standard cart once more, but for option values on special the cart receives the special surcharge instead of the regular one. Everything else — product, quantity, discounts, taxes — is calculated by OpenCart itself.
5. From there everyone uses that cart: the cart page, the mini-cart, checkout, One Page Checkout, order total modules. The order is saved with the special price in the product line.
6. A rule that would make the option dearer than usual is ignored — a special can never raise the price.

How much it costs

Pro is UAH 990, one payment, lifetime licence. No yearly payments. One licence for one domain covers all three builds — OpenCart 4.x, 3.x and 2.3. Moving the shop to another domain — click “Detach” on the Licence tab of the old shop and activate the key on the new one.

Trial first, payment later. A free 7-day Pro trial starts with a button on the Licence tab, one trial per shop. When it ends only the Pro rules switch off — they stay in the admin marked “Pro only”, and simple specials keep working.

Under the hood

• No core edits. The module works through OpenCart events and a startup action. Core files are not changed and product_option_value.price is never rewritten, so removing the module returns the shop to regular prices with no clean-up in the catalogue.
• Standard cart, special surcharge. The cart is built a second time by OpenCart’s own cart class, with only the answers to option value queries substituted. That is why taxes (fixed ones included), quantity discounts, currencies and order total modules work as usual.
• Load. With no active rule the module runs one light query per page. With rules the cart is calculated twice per request — unnoticeable on a normal cart, a doubling of database queries on very large carts.
• Its own rules table (product, option value, customer group, type, price, priority, dates, status) — several rules per value, like OpenCart’s product specials.
• A feed interface. system/library/cc_optspecial/feed.php returns, for a list of option values, the same special price the cart charges. Our Market Feeds does not use it yet — that is planned.
• Multi-store: rules are shared by all stores of the installation.
• Uninstall. Uninstalling removes the events and the startup entry — the storefront charges regular prices straight away. The rules table is kept on purpose so that a reinstall does not wipe your specials. On OpenCart 2.3 uninstalling also deletes the settings together with the licence key — after a reinstall the key has to be activated again.

How to install

1. OpenCart 4: Extensions → Installer → upload cc_optspecial.ocmod.zip (do not rename the archive) and click “Install”. OpenCart 3: Extensions → Installer → cc_optspecial-oc3.ocmod.zip, then Extensions → Modifications → Refresh. OpenCart 2.3: the 2.3 installer does not copy files without a configured FTP, so upload the contents of the upload/ folder from cc_optspecial-oc2.ocmod.zip to the shop root with your hosting file manager — no FTP setup in OpenCart needed.
2. Extensions → Extensions → Modules → Option Specials → “Install”, then “Edit”.
3. Settings tab: set Status to enabled and, if you like, the old price, the -N% badge and the cart saving. Save.
4. Option specials tab: start typing a product name, pick it, click “Add rule” next to the value you want, set a new price or a discount and click “Save specials”.
5. Open the product in the store and add it to the cart — the special price is already in the line.
6. For Pro: paste the licence key from the email you get after payment, or start the 7-day trial on the Licence tab.