sending shopping cart contents to a outside php script

{$ViewCart.items} is an array of items and you can't blindly put that into a form field. It'll probably just get sent over as the string "Array", which does you no good. Instead, you should iterate over the items and create an input for each, eg:

{if !empty($ViewCart.items)} 
<form action="http://www.carmelsilver.com/docs/orderform.php" method="post"> 
<form action="orderform.php" method="post"> 
{foreach from=$ViewCart.items item=item} 
{counter assign=index} 
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][count]" value="{$form.counts[$item.id]}"> 
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][id]" value="{$item.id}"> 
{/foreach} 
<input type="submit" value="Order These Items"/> 
</form>  
{/if} 

This will give you the following result:

Array
(
    [cart] => Array
        (
            [1] => Array
                (
                    [count] => 1
                    [id] => 238
                )

            [2] => Array
                (
                    [count] => 1
                    [id] => 7443
                )

            [3] => Array
                (
                    [count] => 1
                    [id] => 7456
                )

        )

)

I don't know exactly what information you really need. The id is good enough if you're writing code to use G2's api. Otherwise, if you need more information we can show you how to get at it.

This is an easy solution, but it's not durable. When you upgrade G2, it'll break. If you really want to make a good permanent solution, you should code a new module that uses the CartPlugin API so that it can interact with the cart module. Take a look at the ZipCart module to get an idea of how to do that.

ok.. this works great..

{if !empty($ViewCart.items)} 
<form action="http://www.carmelsilver.com/docs/orderform.php" method="post"> 
{foreach from=$ViewCart.items item=item} 
{counter assign=index} 
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][title]" value="{$item.title}">

{if !empty($item.summary)}
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][summary]" value="{$item.summary}">
{else}
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][summary]" value="No Description Available">
{/if}

<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][count]" value="{$form.counts[$item.id]}">
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][description]" value="{$item.description}">
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][href]" value="{g->url arg1="view=core:ShowItem" arg2="itemId=`$item.id`"}">
<input type="hidden" name="cart[{$index}][img]" value="{g->url arg1="view=core:DownloadItem" arg2="itemId=`$item.id`"}">
                                                                               

{/foreach} 
<br>
<input type="submit" value="Send these items to Order Form"/> 
<br>
</form>  
{/if}

all the info I need is passed along to the next page.. then I loop through the array and do this..

<?php 
  
$cart = $_POST[cart]; 

include ("header.php");
  
print "
<table width='100%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left' valign='top'>
<tr>

<td>Item</td>
<td>SN</td>
<td>Description</td>
<td>Quantity</td>
<td>Unit Price</td>
<td>Price</td>
</tr>
";


foreach ($cart as $sub_cart) {

#just alittle math here to make extended price look good
$extended_price = $sub_cart[description] * $sub_cart[count];

#lets strip the slashes out to make summary look good
$new_summary = stripslashes($sub_cart[summary]);

print "
<tr>
<td><a href='$sub_cart[href]' target='_new'><img src='$sub_cart[img]' border='0' width='90'></a></td>
<td>$sub_cart[title]</td>
<td>$new_summary</td>
<td>$sub_cart[count]</td>
<td>\$$sub_cart[description].00</td>
<td>\$$extended_price.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan='5'>&amp;</td>
</tr>
";

}


print "</table>";
  
  include ("footer.php");
  
?>

thanks so much bharat... you da man....