Creating an add-on "product type book" for ZC 1.5

[nikerymis]

Converting is fine; when I go in to update the book, the description is still there. It's when I make any changes and go through the preview/update that the description is wiped. (Specifically, it's wiped on update, not preview). I don't actually have to make any changes at all -- I just clicked through on one of my bookx products without making any changes and it wiped. It is limited to the bookx products, too, as I ran through a general product and had no issue.

If it helps, I'm on PHP version 5.4.24 and 5.5.35 on SQL.


Sasha

[philou]

Hi Sasha,

I found the bug concerning addition of multiple authors at once. But I can't replicate the lost description issue. Maybe this could be in combination with a WYSIWYG editor? Could you try to turn the editor off and just use a plain text field? If it also wipes the description then I should keep looking into the script…

I just need to add a few lines to the documentation and then version 0.9.3 can be posted.

Regards,
p.

[nikerymis]

I only have a Plain Text editor. Unless there's an option I'm not seeing, but plain text is all I've ever used, and I can't find a WYSIWYG option anywhere. Are you using a WYSIWYG editor on your install? I'm willing to add additional plugins to see if that helps. I'm also willing to wipe my current test environment and start fresh with 0.9.3 to see if that helps in anyway.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I was running into this problem on occasion with the general products when I was still on 1.3.9h and on PHP 5.4, but upgrading to zen cart 1.5.1 / PHP 5.4 fixed that.

[philou]

There is an updated beta version ready to download on sourceforge. It mainly fixes some bugs discussed here in the forum and some others I discovered myself :)

There is really only one new feature worth mentioning, which is the option to sort products in any product listing view (including Bookx filter results) by date of availability, placing CSS hooks on the TR elemnts for products "upcoming-product" and "new-product", so you can also style them differently.
If this is not for you, it can be turned off altogether in Admin->Catalog->Product Types->BookX Type->edit layout.

If anybody has a disappearing description problem, the experience of nikerymis might help:

It looks like the problem was the stock by attributes plugin I've been using (this one: http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=202). Removing it in my test environment fixed that bug -- the product descriptions are no longer disappearing on me. I'll probably remove that in the live environment as well, since we're implementing a different process to deal with our stock. :-)

Thanks,
Sasha

Regards,
p.

[nikerymis]

An update on the disappearing product descriptions -- this problem was not caused by the Stock by Attributes plugin as I'd originally thought. It was an intermittent issue, which is why it appeared to be corrected when I tested after uninstalling Stock by Attributes.

The real cause of the error (and it took me an age to sort this out) was special characters in the product description. If the product description contained an emdash, an accented character, an ellipses character (not three periods, but one single character with three dots), the product description disappeared. Replacing these special characters with their HTML # codes fixed the issue completely. :-)

For reference, these are the HTML codes for special characters that I'm referring to: http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm

- Sasha

[Desmat]

Hi Philou
I really do not know, whether i am placing my issue at the right place,
I have set up the bookx addon, and the bug i am getting is as under
1. There are several books which have multiple authors and multiple subjects, when ever the filter searches this kind of author, i get a sub filter which says "Text_all_music _genre" and another box asking for "items starting with", selecting anything brings me back to the index page. Except for this everything seems working fine,

Help required

Cheers

[philou]

Hi Desmat,

is your site online or do you only develop on your local machine? If you are already online somewhere, you could send me the URL (by private message of you prefer) and I could see better what your situation is. I am assuming you are using the sidebox with Bookx Filters, correct? Are you saying you get an additional pop-up inside that sidebox? Or are you on a result page for the search / filter?

If your site is not online, then the request URL could help me (or you ) in finding out what is going on. The Bookx Filters sidebox simply adds something to the URL to search for authors, like "&typefilter=bookx&bookx_author_id=14" for example looks for author with ID 14.

It would be especially interesting what the requested URL is which takes you back to the index page.

Regards,
p.

[DMLyons]

Hi,

I'm using v1.5.1, and I tried to install. It fell flat. Nothing happened. I THINK the problem might have been the code I patched into tpl_tabular_display.php, as per the directions. Now, the directions say to paste that right at the top. I did. I also tried pasting it just below the text portion and one other place near the top of the file. Still nothing. The first paste was done with a text editor. When I started testing placements of the line in DreamWeaver, it REALLY didn't like anywhere I was trying to place that line. So... Can anyone tell me, with reference to another line in the file, what the proper place to put it would be? I would REALLY appreciate it, because this looks like a great plug-in.

Thanks,
DML

[philou]

Hi DML,

you are right, it's a nice little plug-in, so let's see if we can get it to work for you. To get to the root of the problem, let's calrify this: When you say "nothing happens" and you are looking at a page where "tpl_tabular_display.php" is being used, then you are looking for example at the product listing of a certain category which has Bookx-type products in the listing, yes? If BookX is working correctly, you should then see extra infos for these BookX products in the listing, for example an author or the ISBN. To test this further you could make a category in the admin backend called "bookx testing" and add one Bookx-type product there: "Bookx Test Product".
Now when you are listing the category "bookx testing" in your shop, it shows "Bookx Test Product" but in your case no extra book-info like number of pages or ISBN or author etc?
If this is the case then you are correct, the BookX plugin is not working correctly in your setup.

Why do you assume, that "tpl_tabular_display.php" is the problem? The BookX plugin tries to modify the ZC code as little as possible, so it is using the "notifier" functionality of ZC, which then calls the file [YOUR_ZC_INSTALLATION]/includes/classes/observers/class.bookx_observers.php. In the case of tpl_tabular_display.php there was no "notifier" which is why it has to be inserted manually. It must be placed anywhere in the file BEFORE the variable $list_box_contents is being used, because the Bookx Observer inserts the extra book info into $list_box_contents before it is then output into HTML.

If you want to test functionality of Bookx with a debugger, try setting a breakpoint inside [YOUR_ZC_INSTALLATION]/includes/classes/observers/class.bookx_observers.php to see if this file is being called. If it isn't then check if you have really copied all the BookX php files in the correct places or if maybe one is missing.

For example the function "update" around line 154 inside class.bookx_observers.php is a good place for a break point, because that function is called every time the BookX plugin is inserting something somewhere. For tpl_tabular_display.php it should stop at the "switch" option "NOTIFY_TEMPLATE_PRODUCT_LISTING_TABULAR_DISPLAY_BEGIN" which is the notifier you inserted into tpl_tabular_display.php.

Let's see what all this does for you :)

Regards,
p.

[DMLyons]

you are right, it's a nice little plug-in, so let's see if we can get it to work for you. To get to the root of the problem, let's calrify this: When you say "nothing happens"
Now when you are listing the category "bookx testing" in your shop, it shows "Bookx Test Product" but in your case no extra book-info like number of pages or ISBN or author etc?

Why do you assume, that "tpl_tabular_display.php" is the problem?

When I say nothing happens, I mean that I can't even get it to install. I put in the http://[YOUR-SHOP-URL]/[YOUR-ADMIN-FOLDER]/?action=bookx_install URL (security being what it is, I don't want to paste it here, of course), and I get a 404 NOT FOUND error. If I name my shop instead of my admin, it just shows me the shop, and if I name my shop AND my admin, as I would to log into the admin, it shows me the log-in page for admin. Doing it precisely as directed gets me a 404. So...nothing. Nothing changes and the module isn't initializing. I've double checked, and all the files are in place, as ordered. Honestly, I'm not sure what I could be missing. Aside from little nits, I've never faced one that simply wouldn't move, so I have to assume I'm doing something wrong. Darned if I know WHAT I'm doing wrong, but something.

And no, I can't get as far as seeing the BookX options in the admin. If I got that far, I would consider it a nit I'm dealing with. So, testing to see if a file is being called won't help, because it's not calling anything right now. Grin...

To be honest, I fixated on the tabular file for only two reasons... The directions for that one weren't all that specific, and DW hated where I was trying to place the code. Shrug. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't, and that's not my problem. Scratch it off the list, I say.

Thanks for your help, though. Hopefully, I can figure out where I'm messing up eventually.

DML