Comments missing from Order email

[royaldave]

Hi

I had an order today where the comments the customer put in did NOT appear in the order email. Just wondering if anyone can shed some light on this ?

The code from order.php

//comments area
if ($this->info['comments']) {
$email_order .= EMAIL_TEXT_COMMENTS_AREA . "\n\n". zen_db_output($this->info['comments']) . "\n" . EMAIL_SEPARATOR . "\n" ;
$html_msg['ORDER_COMMENTS'] = nl2br(zen_db_output($this->info['comments']));
} else {
$html_msg['ORDER_COMMENTS'] = '';
}


The if statement worked correctly because it did output the EMAIL_TEXT_COMMENTS_AREA into the email - but it was blank underneath.

In admin I can see these comments were put in -

Delivery is to XXXXXXXXXX, who is a teacher in the Maths Department in XXXXXX. This is a surprise
Message for card - Happy 30th birthday Auntie Patty. Love you very much. Love R?ain.xxxx


Now the ? I suspect is a character that doesn't translate into zencart very well - but could it blank out the whole section in the email ??

[lat9]

You don't indicate what version of Zen Cart you're using in your store, but older versions of ZC had more character-conversion issues that the more recent. In direct answer to your last question: Yes, a single character can nullify an entire PHP variable's data, if the character cannot be represented in the character-set your store is using.

A couple of other settings that might be pertinent:

1. The DB_CHARSET value, present in your store's /includes/configure.php file.
2. The CHARSET value, present in your store's /includes/languages/YOUR_TEMPLATE/english.php (if present) or /includes/languages/english.php (if the template-override version isn't there).

[royaldave]

You don't indicate what version of Zen Cart you're using in your store, but older versions of ZC had more character-conversion issues that the more recent. In direct answer to your last question: Yes, a single character can nullify an entire PHP variable's data, if the character cannot be represented in the character-set your store is using.

A couple of other settings that might be pertinent:

1. The DB_CHARSET value, present in your store's /includes/configure.php file.
2. The CHARSET value, present in your store's /includes/languages/YOUR_TEMPLATE/english.php (if present) or /includes/languages/english.php (if the template-override version isn't there).

Using 1.5.4.

Thanks, I'll checkout what you've suggested.