Allow customer to choose Ship to Country at any time

Question

How would I allow my customers to choose their ship to country at any time in the site.

I thought I could do so with this example code but the checkout still defaults to the stores default values (If not logged in, still as guest)

$shippingAddress = Mage::getModel('checkout/cart')->getQuote()->getShippingAddress();
$shippingAddress->setCountryId('GB')->save();
// Great Britain as an example!

The goal is to not have to create a store for every country and to show the customers that we can ship to any country.

The customer will choose from a country select page and then the site would remember the ship to at checkout.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can try to set it in session:

Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->setCountryId('GB');

and then to change in app/code/core/Mage/Checkout/Block/Onepage/Abstract.php -> public function getCountryHtmlSelect($type) this code:

if (is_null($countryId)) {
    $countryId = Mage::helper('core')->getDefaultCountry();
}

with this:

if (is_null($countryId)) {
    if (Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->hasCountryId()) {
        $countryId = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getCountryId();
    } else {
        $countryId = Mage::helper('core')->getDefaultCountry();
    }
}