order emails, How does it work?

[vandijkstef]

Hi,

Been working on some changes in the way zen cart handles the order and notifies the customer.
I'm fine with coding and most ZC stuff. (Working with ZC for several years now, mostly code-stuff)

I'm looking for a way to:
- Still get the order in the database upon leaving ZC to a payment page.
- NOT send the order confirmation. I'll call this function later on.

I'm aware of the classes/order.php (which has the functions) and the modules/checkout_process.php (which calls the functions???).
A module I have already does the behaviour described above, but I can't find how it does that.

So, if anyone has any suggestions, or maybe some detailed (dev)docs about the order&payment-system(really confused about the exact flow of this), it would make me very happy. Just need to know where I need to add an if-statement.. ;)

Thnx!

[lat9]

The Zen Cart order-confirmation email is sent via the store-side order class' send_order_email function.

You can modify your store to not send the email during checkout by editing your template's override of /includes/modules/checkout_process.php (the copy of that file that is present in /includes/modules/YOUR_TEMPLATE/checkout_process.php) and commenting-out the call to send_order_email:

// load the before_process function from the payment modules
$payment_modules->before_process();
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_PAYMENT_MODULES_BEFOREPROCESS');
// create the order record
$insert_id = $order->create($order_totals, 2);
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE');
$payment_modules->after_order_create($insert_id);
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_PAYMENT_MODULES_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE');
// store the product info to the order
$order->create_add_products($insert_id);
$_SESSION['order_number_created'] = $insert_id;
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE_ADD_PRODUCTS');
//send email notifications
//-Uncomment the following line to enable the checkout-confirmation email to be sent
// $order->send_order_email($insert_id, 2);
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL');

[vandijkstef]

Your solution sounds template specific, not module specific. In this case my "vanilla" payment methods will probably break (CoD/Freeshipper/moneyorder etc.)

Is this file being called upon leaving the store to a payment gateway, or upon return from the payment gateway?
My guess it's upon leaving to a gateway, not sure..

I now see this function "$payment_modules->before_process();", I'll dive into that.

[mc12345678]

Your solution sounds template specific, not module specific. In this case my "vanilla" payment methods will probably break (CoD/Freeshipper/moneyorder etc.)

Is this file being called upon leaving the store to a payment gateway, or upon return from the payment gateway?
My guess it's upon leaving to a gateway, not sure..

I now see this function "$payment_modules->before_process();", I'll dive into that.

Umm, not sure what you mean by module specific when the solution provided is to modify a module that is (happens to be) template overrideable...

If referring to making that change only for a specific payment module, then that was not initially expressed and therefore a suggestion/solution was not provided to address the one specific payment module that is in question. If that is the case/desired then the edit provided by lat9 could be modified to account for which payment module is being used/processing the payment and therefore could provide the email action in the above code for all payment modules except the one that needs to be handled separately.

As for when the file is being processed, it is somewhat of a yes to your question of before or after the payment module has processed it... Perhaps your solution does lie within the before_process code for the applicable payment processor such that it has the appropriate checks to allow completion of the process outlined in the module (without edit) or perhaps the need for observers to integrate with the notifiers that have been provided... There are other notifiers (includes/classes/order.php) that can be used to modify the email being sent or not, and then later the email could be sent if the modifications in the before_process function above are not sufficient to provide the end goal.

Again though, the posted request was:

I'm looking for a way to:
- Still get the order in the database upon leaving ZC to a payment page.
- NOT send the order confirmation. I'll call this function later on.

And the solution provided did that...

To identify the payment module, could modify lat9's suggestion to something like the following:

// load the before_process function from the payment modules
$payment_modules->before_process();
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_PAYMENT_MODULES_BEFOREPROCESS');
// create the order record
$insert_id = $order->create($order_totals, 2);
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE');
$payment_modules->after_order_create($insert_id);
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_PAYMENT_MODULES_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE');
// store the product info to the order
$order->create_add_products($insert_id);
$_SESSION['order_number_created'] = $insert_id;
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_ORDER_CREATE_ADD_PRODUCTS');
//send email notifications
if ($GLOBALS[$payment_modules->selected_module]->code != 'specialpaymentmodule') {
  $order->send_order_email($insert_id, 2);
}
$zco_notifier->notify('NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL');

Where $payment_modules->selected_module identifies the payment module... The above would perform the send_order_email action if the payment module of choice for the order is anything but specialpaymentmodule...

[DrByte]

I'm looking for a way to:
- Still get the order in the database upon leaving ZC to a payment page.
- NOT send the order confirmation. I'll call this function later on.

The v1.5.x (and earlier versions) architecture of Zen Cart's checkout flow doesn't store the order in the db until after the payment module completes its steps.
The normal flow is that the payment module runs its before_process() method to take the data from the payment page and submit it in real-time to the payment gateway (or receive the response from the offsite gateway after completing payment and returning to the site). Then optionally runs an after_process() method if present (often just to update internal logs, if anything at all).
Then it writes the order to the database. The premise here is that only the orders that have been accepted by the payment process (ie: usually this means "payment received" or at least payment is pending because of a valid credit card authorization or the customer has agreed to send a check in the mail) actually make it into the database.
Then it sends the email.
Then it shows the checkout-success page to the customer.

The money_order.php module is an example of allowing pending-payment orders to get saved.

As for skipping the email confirmation, there's nothing in that part of the code to detect which payment method was used in order to take alternate action.
As much as I hate using $GLOBALS, you could add a line to the beginning of the send_order_email() method of the order class to check something like

if ($GLOBALS[$_SESSION['payment']]->code == 'my_module_code_string') return;

That would check the comparison against this line in your payment module:

$this->code = 'my_module_code_string';

[vandijkstef]

Now you mention, indeed my questions wasn't clear enough. Heat of the moment I suppose..

This payment flow was really an unidentified part of ZC for me, thanks all for clearing this up! Really feel I'll get to a good solution with these answers

To keep information (kinda) complete:
I'm now working on a solution that involves some checking-code within the before_process(); (Which resides within the payment module). That code sets some flags to decide the rest of the processing. (My current module apparently immediatly accepts, if there are no errors, and then goes to it's gateway, emails already sent. It's not the best payment module around..)