Conditional Required Fields

Heres the issue: My site sells a fundraising product for organizations. Each organization's needs vary, and as such some want to track their sales for individual participants within the group and some do not. So instead of creating 30 different products for each participant within the organization, I've created a custom field on the order table for the name of the participant.

Now this works great, but only if every organization wants to keep track of which participant a sale is to benefit. But not all of them do. I've created a custom field, Required_Participant_Name, on the product table which is a simple yes/no radio button. Based on the value of the radio button, I would like to display the custom field on the order table for the name of the participant. Is this possible? Is there a more elegant solution to my problem? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your response, I've gotten the loop to execute properly and the custom fields are conditionally displayed as expected. However, if the fields are not shown and the user proceeds to the next checkout step an error is thrown asking the user to fill in the custom field even though it is not displayed. Is there a way to disable this error message as well?? If you want to see the errors I can provide you w/ URL's. Thanks again!

In addition to displaying or not displaying the custom field on checkout, my initial thought is to manually set the custom field 'participant name' of the order table to "none" if the radio button on the product table is set to no. Then in the e-mails, edit where the custom field is printed to only display if not equal to "none". The only problem is I am not entirely sure how to reference the custom field array to set the value of 'participant name' to "none".

the url you can add the product to the cart is: themetrocashcard.com/trenton-highschool-sample1 I will set the "required_participant" to No. Below is the code for my modified checkout / fields.php , I've left database info blank for this purpose.




<?php
/**
* @package HikaShop for Joomla!
* @version 1.5.5
* @author hikashop.com
* @copyright (C) 2010-2011 HIKARI SOFTWARE. All rights reserved.
* @license GNU/GPLv3 www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
*/
defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');
?>
<?php
$cartClass = hikashop_get('class.cart');
$cart = $cartClass->loadFullCart(true);
$this->rows =& $cart->products;

foreach($this->rows as $row)
{

$productClass = hikashop_get('class.product');
$product = $productClass->get($row->product_id);

if(empty($product)) continue;
if(!empty($product))
{
$hostname='';
$username='';
$password='';
$dbname='';
$usertable='jos_hikashop_product';
mysql_connect($hostname,$username, $password) OR DIE ('Unable to connect to database! Please try again later.');
mysql_select_db($dbname);
$query = 'SELECT * FROM ' . $usertable;
$result = mysql_query($query);
if($result)
{
while($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$query_result_product_id = $row1;
if($query_result_product_id == $product->product_id)
{
$required_participant_name = $row1;

}

}

}
}
}?>

<?php if(hikashop_level(2) && !empty($this->extraFields) && $required_participant_name=="TRUE"){

hikashop = Array('participant_name');
?>
<div id="hikashop_checkout_additional_info" class="hikashop_checkout_additional_info">
<fieldset class="input">
<legend><?php echo JText::_('ADDITIONAL_INFORMATION');?></legend>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="hikashop_contentpane">
<?php
if(!empty($this->extraFields)){
JRequest::setVar('hikashop_check_order',1);
$this->setLayout('custom_fields');
$this->type = 'order';
echo $this->loadTemplate();
}
?>
</table>
</fieldset>
</div>
<div style="clear:both"></div>
<?php } ?>

I appreciate your help, this will now properly display or not display the custom field. However ( the custom field is set as a required field) when the field is displayed the user is now able to proceed to the next step without ever entering a value into the field. In otherwords.. right back to where we began. Here's a URL www.themetrocashcard.com/trenton-marketing-nyc2012 to recreate if needed, and below is the code that I currently have for checkout/fields.php

EDIT: In FireFox on windows, if the custom field is NOT displayed and the user proceeds to the next step an error is displayed as follows: "please fill Participant Name field" even though there is no participant name field displayed.

<?php
/**
 * @package    HikaShop for Joomla!
 * @version    1.5.5
 * @author    hikashop.com
 * @copyright  (C) 2010-2011 HIKARI SOFTWARE. All rights reserved.
 * @license    GNU/GPLv3 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
 */
defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');
?>

<?php
$cartClass = hikashop_get('class.cart');
$cart = $cartClass->loadFullCart(true);
$this->rows =& $cart->products;
$required_participant_name = false;
foreach($this->rows as $row){
 $productClass = hikashop_get('class.product');
 $product = $productClass->get($row->product_id);
 if($product->required_participant_name == "TRUE" ) $required_participant_name = true;
}
 
if(!$required_participant_name){
$doc =& JFactory::getDocument();
$js="hikashop['reqFieldsComp']['order'] = Array();";
$doc->addScriptDeclaration( "<!--\n".$js."\n//-->\n" );
return;
}
?>


<?php if(hikashop_level(2) && !empty($this->extraFields['order']) && $required_participant_name == true){

?>
<div  id="hikashop_checkout_additional_info" class="hikashop_checkout_additional_info">
  <fieldset class="input">
    <legend><?php echo JText::_('ADDITIONAL_INFORMATION');?></legend>
    <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="hikashop_contentpane">
  <?php
    if(!empty($this->extraFields['order'])){
      JRequest::setVar('hikashop_check_order',1);
      $this->setLayout('custom_fields');
      $this->type = 'order';
      echo $this->loadTemplate();
    }
  ?>
    </table>
  </fieldset>
</div>
<div style="clear:both"></div>
<?php } ?>

I apologize in advance if I'm becoming a burden, and truly appreciate your bearing with my inexperience in the matter. Removing that code seems to have fixed the error message when the custom field is not displayed in FireFox. But if the field is displayed you are still able to proceed to the next step without entering any value into the required custom field. I can see the following in the page source

<!-- hikashop['reqFieldsComp']['order'] = Array('participant_name');
					hikashop['validFieldsComp']['order'] = Array('Please enter the name of the participant that you are supporting by making this purchase:  ');
//-->

I've fixed the javascript error on the site, but yet again to no avail. themetrocashcard.com/component/hikashop/product/cid-11 ( the other link above is no good for the purpose of correcting this issue as it has gone live now ) is a link to see that there are indeed no more javascript issues on the page.

DOH!!

<?php
/**
 * @package    HikaShop for Joomla!
 * @version    1.5.5
 * @author    hikashop.com
 * @copyright  (C) 2010-2011 HIKARI SOFTWARE. All rights reserved.
 * @license    GNU/GPLv3 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
 */
defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');
?>
 
<?php
$cartClass = hikashop_get('class.cart');
$cart = $cartClass->loadFullCart(true);
$this->rows =& $cart->products;
$required_participant_name = false;
foreach($this->rows as $row){
 $productClass = hikashop_get('class.product');
 $product = $productClass->get($row->product_id);
 if($product->required_participant_name == "TRUE" ) $required_participant_name = true;
}
 
if(!$required_participant_name){
$doc =& JFactory::getDocument();
$js="hikashop['reqFieldsComp']['order'] = Array();";
$doc->addScriptDeclaration( "<!--\n".$js."\n//-->\n" );
return;
}
?>
 
 
<?php if(hikashop_level(2) && !empty($this->extraFields['order']) && $required_participant_name == true){
 
?>
<div  id="hikashop_checkout_additional_info" class="hikashop_checkout_additional_info">
  <fieldset class="input">
    <legend><?php echo JText::_('ADDITIONAL_INFORMATION');?></legend>
    <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="hikashop_contentpane">
  <?php
    if(!empty($this->extraFields['order'])){
      JRequest::setVar('hikashop_check_order',1);
      $this->setLayout('custom_fields');
      $this->type = 'order';
      echo $this->loadTemplate();
    }
  ?>
    </table>
  </fieldset>
</div>
<div style="clear:both"></div>
<?php } ?>

if(!$class->check($fields[$k],$val,@$oldData->$namekey)){
$ok = false;
}