[Old] Royal Mail Modules

[Chuckl]

TFB,
Where/when are you getting those errors? Is it as soon as you access the shop, at checkout, when you add to the cart, etc etc?
Secondly, what other mods/addons if any do you have installed?

Ed.
I don't use the Paypal Express checkout, but the discussion here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58104

and the text associated with the 'Auto select cheapest' seem to indicate that it could return you to the shipping page if it's confused? viz:

'When customer returns from PayPal, do we want to automatically select the Cheapest shipping method and skip the shipping page? (making it more *express*)Note: enabling this means the customer does *not* have easy access to select an alternate shipping method (without going back to the Checkout-Step-1 page)'

I'll do a bit of digging.

Chuck

[TPHoare]

I am getting really confused about the freeshipper module and Royal Mail Module.

What I need to do is have some products which are always shipped free with no other option and others for which we charge.

What I get for the free shipped products is both free shipping and chargeable postage offered.

It's all to do with VAT being chargeable for some products but not others and the only way round it, that I can see, is to make delivery included within the price of zero rated items.

[eddie0uk]

Ed.
I don't use the Paypal Express checkout, but the discussion here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58104

and the text associated with the 'Auto select cheapest' seem to indicate that it could return you to the shipping page if it's confused? viz:

'When customer returns from PayPal, do we want to automatically select the Cheapest shipping method and skip the shipping page? (making it more *express*)Note: enabling this means the customer does *not* have easy access to select an alternate shipping method (without going back to the Checkout-Step-1 page)'

I'll do a bit of digging.

Chuck

Thanks, it is true for me as well that weights are not calculated correctly with Paypal Express. Oh well, I will disable the skip shipping option and let the user choose the shipping method. Thanks.

[Chuckl]

TPHoare,

It's a while since I used the free shipping, but a couple of things spring to mind. Firstly there are 2 free shipping modules, one manically applies itself, the other allows one to set some options.
Secondly, if a product is always free shipping, it should probably be set to Product Type 'product-free shipping', as if it is set to Product Type 'product-general' and one of the other shipping modules sees shipping type attributes like weight or destination zone in the shipping estimator or checkout, they will calculate a shipping cost.

Chuck

[TPHoare]

Chuck

Thanks for reply - I still get the other RM options showing but by jiggling with the costs I can always show a zero price for free delivery items.

My ultimate solution, however, would be to show zero rated products having zero rated delivery. Don't suppose you have any idea if anything is around that I could use.

Going to be either out of pocket or in trouble with the VAT man otherwise.

Tim

[Chuckl]

Tim,
You're getting into very murky waters there. As I understand the default position if a charge is made for delivery of zero rated goods, the delivery is regarded as a separate contract, and is vatable. Postage is, however, zero rated.
If delivery is included, or you act as your clients agent in arranging delivery with the Royal Mail on their behalf, etc etc it may also be zero rated. Tis the most fine grained nitpicking I have ever seen. See leaflet 700/24.
Returning to your question itself, it shouldn't be too difficult to detect a zero rated product and zero rate the delivery charges, but tread carefully, as I would imagine that if you don't collect them, you're still liable to pay them.

Chuck

[TPHoare]

I know, was on to the VAT people this morning following a customer's query. The VAT person made no bones about it - zero rate goods, zero rate delivery. Also if you look at Amazon, they don't charge VAT on delivery of books, but obviously do on anything else.

Anyway, the safest bet for the time being is to offer free delivery on zero rate goods and charge normally for the rest.

Thanks for reply anyway

[Chuckl]

I'd suggest writing the VAT persons name down in a very prominent and accessible place, just in case. They tend to change their minds on such things.
In a nutshell, Zen cart implements the concept of a shipping method based tax, rather than an individual product shipping tax, probably because Sales Tax rather than VAT is used in the USA.
The shipping calc routines simply get a weight, from which they calculate a rate and apply any tax they have been told about. To change this cleanly, one would probably have to also pass the product tax rate in, and apply that instead as a quick and dirty. I'm sure there are more elegant ways to do it.

Chuck

[Pixxi]

Ok. I've discovered how to get this error to happen on a test shop, so for anyone who is using database-based caching and having the following errors:

Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in ... ...

and/or:

Warning: session_start(): Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at ...

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at ...

1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'EXPECTED_PRODUCTS_SORT limit MAX_DISPLAY
in:
[select p.products_id, pd.products_name, products_date_available as date_expected from products p, products_description pd where p.products_id = pd.products_id and p.products_status = 1 and pd.language_id = '1' and p.products_date_available >=20070313 order by EXPECTED_PRODUCTS_FIELD EXPECTED_PRODUCTS_SORT limit MAX_DISPLAY_UPCOMING_PRODUCTS]

when they install more than a few (typically 5+) Royal Mail modules in their shop, the following (hopefully) will explain what's happening, and why the SQL fix hasn't seemed to work.

As Philip said in his bug report (see post #279 above) the above errors are being caused by the cache_data field in the db_cache table (in the database) not being big enough out-of-the-box to hold the increased data that the Royal Mail module(s) adds - each module adds a load of zone and shipping rate parameters, so the more modules you add, the bigger the stored data becomes until the storage capacity of the cache_data field is exceeded and the data that the shop is attempting to store there becomes corrupted.

As Philip has said, typically your shop will be fine the first time you access it after installing the RM modules (or after enabling more of them in admin) as the parameters are read from the various tables in the database and stored for the first time in the db_cache table) but subsequent visits will give the error (when the corrupted cached data is then read from the db_cache table).

The solution (again as Philip has said) is to either increase the size of that field from 'blob' to 'mediumblob' - either by editing the structure of the field in the db_cache table, or by running the SQL:

 ALTER TABLE db_cache CHANGE COLUMN cache_data cache_data MEDIUMBLOB NOT NULL 

or, alternatively, to change to file-based caching (in your configure.php files) so the db_cache table isn't used.

For those people who've already run the SQL to increase the field size to 'mediumblob' and still have the errors, this is is important step that's been missed so far:

The db_cache table is still holding corrupted data - so even after you've ran the SQL, the corrupted data is still in the db_cache table and is being retrieved by the shop, and hence the errors still appear. You need to delete the row of cached data in the db_cache table.

You can delete the row either by editing the db_cache table directly with PHPMyAdmin - it will typically look like this:

cache_entry_name                           cache_data                cache_entry_created
zc_cc21d2f64edffccfe06d12dd3327...        (might appear blank)         1173818124 

( delete the table row beginning 'zc_...')

or by changing (temporarily) to file-based caching by editing your includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php and changing:

  define('SQL_CACHE_METHOD', 'database'); 

to

  define('SQL_CACHE_METHOD', 'file'); 

Then save both configure.php files and access your shop - the error should disappear. If you wish, you can then change both configure.php entries back to 'database' - providing you've first run the SQL, of course.

If you change to file-based caching, check you have the correct path to your cache folder set in admin->configuration->sessions->session directory - it should look something like (your path will probably differ):

/home/your server user name/public_html/cache

@theflyingbeard (and anyone else who tried it): Apologies for giving you duff info in my post above (post #281) on what to change in your configure files - I was thinking of 'sessions' when I should have been thinking of 'cache'.

[Chuckl]

Well done Pixxi.
A cachet for your cache work!

Chuck