Magento debug “cannot add item to cart”

When adding a product in shopping cart on your magento installed website, it shows message as below. It does not allows you to add the product to your shopping cart.

Cannot add the item to shopping cart.

When adding a product to your shopping cart system needs a directory in which the sessions files can be stored temporarily. On linux servers, these session files are stored in tmp directory.

Open the file named “File.php” under your magento installation. Path is “lib/Zend/Cache/Backend/File.php“. On a cPanel installed server the absolute path is “/home/user/public_html/lib/Zend/Cache/Backend/File.php“. Change

protected $_options = array(

‘cache_dir’ => ‘null’,

with

protected $_options = array(

‘cache_dir’ => ‘tmp/’,

Save the file and exit. Make sure you create a tmp directory under the directory magento is installed. Set permissions to 777.

Magento builds up cache at a higher rate in comparison to other e-commerce applications. Whenever you make any changes in the code OR configuration form admin panel, make sure to clear the cache. Delete all the content under “var/cache” OR “/home/user/public_html/var/cache“.

Now try adding the products to your shopping cart & they will work like a charm.