[Old] Royal Mail Modules

Evening all,

So if there a problem with the module ? It's been a long time and I saw that it was maintained well. One thing woud have been easier though. When I wrote it and then left, I was in the process of working by increment, so that the SQL calculations for postage say for "signed for" could be worked out as "first class weight + 0.98 pence" or whatever the current value is, then when the rates changed there would be a "base set of values" say from April 2008 and all the installation program would do is go, right we're now on version XXX so we need to split the stored values by : and comma loop through them and add 19 pence. There would be special cases for exampled when 21p is added rather than 22p, but a few sql statements was a lot easier than manually having to add each value (because I did it about 17 times and it's an onerous task).

So who's in charge now and what's the problem ? If the data is being posted out to one payment method, but not to another, the best thing would be to dump the data in the payment module causing the problem and work out if it is actually still there, or being lost on Google's side of the net.

Regards.
Philip

Just to confirm, this is really me, my old bouncingltd account actually still works, but I prefer the other one.

The short story is I disagree with the ZC moderators on certain topics and so left.

I'm disabled and my rehab team suggested I try and do something to take my mind of it. Along came someone with a question on Big Royal Mail, who didn't know I'd left (I'm very surprised this account still works) and while I was looking through his code I found a security hole in a payment module.

I fixed that bug and now am sort of developing that module, the same person that dragged me back in, mentioned there appears to be something going on with this module and payment modules, so I might be able to help. I'm just as tetchy as ever, but I'm not looking to tread on anyone's toes, I just thought I could help with the debugging if need be,

is Pixxi still around ? I never worked out if it was a he or she, but they were always very capable.

Philip.

Thanks, topcat24, I will look into that.

I am just finishing the my webstore installation off to try and get things going before Christmas, but I really want Google Checkout on my site, so hopefully that will be on the cards over the weekend between walking and finishing off some orders.

bouncingltd, - so you are thinking of taking up the torch on this mod? - Good luck! - I don't know about pixxi, but I do know that the mod could use some kind of filtering in the product lists or the addition of length and width/thickness in order to get letter and large letter postage working properly.

- At the moment I have had to remove the functionality of those modules because I sell 1m threaded rods and cannot have people being able to buy these with a 36p postage charge because the weight is less than 100g!

Re: philip_darke post:

Why would you do this? - The seperate module approach seems to handle most situations well without incrementation.

The only problem area (for me, and topcat24 it would seem) is not being able to remove certain postage options per product, eg: on the product listing pages, and not being able to limit letter and large letter by the length and width/thickness of the item(s) to be posted.

I'm not saying that incrementation is not necessary, - I'm simply not certain what issue it would be addressing, save possibly as an alternative to having multiple postage modules, when some things could possibly be handled by a smaller number of modules.

Okay I'll just write using this account as I'm trying to manage another module. Okay I'm not here to take over or anything. I am thinking of whomever is maintaining the project, when I first did this I had to manually enter those weight:price colons for 17 different modules (approx) and then they changed the prices, and it is a hell of a bad job for whomever is the maintainer. After having done it twice, I was moving towards have a base set of values, then when RM change their prices it's a lot easier just to go "right add 20p to everything" because you can also key it on a date, so if they change on April 23rd then you can tell the system to activate the increment then.

Believe me, filling in those text boxes so that you lot can use the module is really really boring. I seriously don't envy that part of the module maintenance.


Now Next Point: (I'm working backwards). Apparently in a japanese modification of ZC there is the ability to put dimensions in, I was going to investigate this but never got around to it because of the abrupt way I left. Yes, I felt it was needed when things went by dimensions but it would be very difficult although the benefit would be that then there would only be one first class module that would shift pricing if the purchases reached a certain dimension, that would be very cool.

Easy Removing of Postage options, one could add a non-displaying attribute to each product, as a flag for the modules, like Attribute: SKIP_FIRST_CLASS_LETTER and then key that into the modules. That would be an easy fix (assuming that one can set attributes to non-displaying). I thought when I left it, that the modules did disable themselves on weight though ? It's been a long time anyway.

Hi!

On the shipping section, is there a way of limiting shipping
options on each product to one. For example, at the moment lightweight items could be large letter or small packet depending on size, but I don't want large letter rate to come up if they have to go as a small packet, as customer would obviously try to use the cheapest option.

Hope you understand what I mean.

Thanks!

basically no, it's been under discussion for a long time, I was the original author, someone's taken it over, but so far there is no way of limiting size attributes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bouncingltd

Just to confirm, this is really me, my old bouncingltd account actually still works, but I prefer the other one.

The short story is I disagree with the ZC moderators on certain topics and so left.

is Pixxi still around ? I never worked out if it was a he or she, but they were always very capable.

Philip.

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Hi Philip! :-)

Glad to see you're still up and fighting :-)

This thread (and module) has really missed your expertise, attention, and knowledge - big time.

Some people have gallantly stepped in and updated the postage rates (and whatnot) in your absence, but it would seem that you are the only person that has the ideas and capacity to develop and sustain what you initially created.

No, it's still 'your' mod - other people have just stepped into the breach (as it were) while you were away, to try to keep it usable for all of the people in the UK who really need a Royal Mail shipping mod.

Glad to see you back - people here need your skills and experience! (just ignore ...) ;-)

Best wishes

Pixxi

Oh you bottom kisser you, but you've got to admire whomever did update the postage rates because that was a really unpleasant job.

I'm not back, at least not yet, I never stopped programming, just did it for myself, then my rehabilitation team suggested I start "work" again, and a guy from here Carl happened to ask a question about the module, so I fixed that, and when looking through his payment gateway code (he had another problem) I found a security hole you can drive a truck through. DrByte suspended the module in question and the developer fixed it, I modded it, and now am really working it through to give it some performance. The same security hole exists over ot osCommerce, so I go over there, get flamed, find out that there's been holes outstanding for two years, I've been banned from posting now for five days over there for pointing out that one of my flamers (?) blatently stated he knew about at least one hole but has been installing the shops for people. the GPL covers the developers for no warranty but I'm pretty sure that trading standards would have something to say about a bloke installing faulty shops under the "fit for purpose" laws.

I have a lot of "work" to do as I've got to finish off the module here, then try and persuade them over there that they really should fix the exploits, and then I may just make it back over here to see what's been going on. My memory is full of holes because of the medications over the years, but I thought we'd agreed that we'd increment the SQL so that no poor sod had to do what we had to do all those years back and type in weight:postage amount, hundreds of times and then check them all ?

I promise that once I've tried to put some security into the payment modules, that I will have a proper look at attributes, see if I can reduce the modules down into incremented versions and then (optionally because someone won't configure their catalogue correctly) key them into sizes. I don't even know what username I'm signed in under. Because it's me, I've also had to fix three people's servers over the last few weeks, because they'd misconfigured things.

What more can I say ? I've certainly missed you, it was an almighty relief to see you pop up again, because maybe we can get cracking again in the near future.

I actually have no idea why I should be doing this, it just looks like someone has to ;-)