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

hboswijk:

I haven't had the time yet to take a look at the plugin, unfortunately. But about the ISBN:

• not all books have an ISBN!
• ISBN's may be printed wrong in the book
• some books have different cover-editions (but the same ISBN's)
  So I think one needs an internal product or model number and a separate ISBN-field (useful extras: the handling of hyphens and a check on the number).

Yes, I think the need for an additional field for an internal ID is easy to see and something like this will be added for sure. Books that don't have an ISBN could use the ISBN field or separate field for ID. You can also decide to just leave the ISBN field empty and fill in only the book titles if that works for you. Books with different covers could simply have the same ISBN and different cover images, so no problem there either as far as I can see.

ISBN number validation will surely be implemented.

Actually, the "model no" is not used in all that many places in the ZC system and I now discover that some BookX specific info needs to be injected anyway in the shopping cart (e.g. "subtitle" of book). Therefore, an extra ISBN field separate from "model no." looks like it could work ok.

Cool. I wasn't saying that my customer uses Amazon's internal IDs. It was just an example of what another online store does with products that have ISBNs. They need to use their own internal id number for inventory. The model number field is treated just like the products_id field in osCommerce. It really is an ID field rather than a model number. They just couldn't call it id because they implemented an auto-increment field with that name for database rules.

So who's using this plugin? Remember, it's Feedbackware ;)
Tell us what kind of shop you are using it for e.g. publisher? Bookseller? Multi-language?, if you only sell books or other products as well. That helps me to get an idea what other user scenarios to keep in mind while developing this plugin.

I am close to relasing another version of the plugin, which will still be called BETA, but I find it's in fact rather stable. If anybody discovered bugs while using it, now is a good time to let me know.

Apart from ironing out some minor glitches, the new version will most notably allow searching for BookX attributes like authors, publishers, series, etc. via the ZC "search" sidebox. Furthermore it adds a separate listing of BookX attributes, like all authors, all series, etc.

Cheerio,
p.

OK, now I have taken some time to look at the plugin. It looks very nice already from a booksellers point of view. I can't judge the technical side.

Here are my observations:

1. I tried to add a dutch translation to the plugin, simply by copying the language files to a folder 'dutch' and translating some of the strings. But that does not function properly. On the storefront the only book I see is the one I added manually. The imported titles from the sample data file don't show up. On the admin side adding or editing a book in the dutch interface results in a blank page. In German and English it works OK. So obviously installing a translation needs something extra.

2. Importing the sample book data resulted in an error (this was before I installed a german language pack for Zencart), and then some of the fields were imported (title, description), others were not (authors, publishers were replaced by authors and publishers I had already entered). But maybe this was due to my messing around with the dutch translation. I will try a new clean install of it all to check this out.

3. The order of the custom fields is now: (Is this image visible?)
   In text: Subtitle, Publishing date, Volume no., No. of pages, Size, Publisher, Series, Author(s), Binding.
   A more logical order would be (certainly for me as a former librarian :smile:), including not yet available (nya) fields: Subtitle, Author(s), Edition (nya), Publisher, Publishing date, No. of pages, Size, Series, Volume no., Annotation (nya, could go in Description), ISBN (nya?), Keywords (nya).

4. The Publishing date field now requires a real date, but just a year will do fine, as day and month are normally unknown.

About the front:

5. I created some author types (main author, editor, illustrator, translator). In the product listing they don't show up in the right sorting order, and anyway just the main author would be enough there. (in Opera that is, in IE9 only the main author is shown ?)

6. In the single product view, part of the information is shown twice: once below the title, and once more under the description (publisher and authors).

7. The Book filters box in the sidebar shows information from the box above it, under the header, above the filters.
   See: www.h b p r o j e c t e n.nl/hbwinkel

That's it for now.

Hi hboswijk,

thanks for your feedback.

Here some comments:

hboswijk:

1. I tried to add a dutch translation to the plugin, simply by copying the language files to a folder 'dutch' and translating some of the strings. But that does not function properly. On the storefront the only book I see is the one I added manually. The imported titles from the sample data file don't show up. On the admin side adding or editing a book in the dutch interface results in a blank page. In German and English it works OK. So obviously installing a translation needs something extra.

I tried to duplicate your problem, but everything works here. I duplicated the "english" folders in "ADMIN/includes/languages/" and "CATALOG/inlcudes/languages/" and named the folders "dutch". I then created a new language called "Nederlands", folder name "dutch", language code "nl". Everything seems to wortk fine, my products show up and a new product with info in the "dutch" fields displays that info. I have changed some language files inside the folder "dutch" (BookX files) and if the frontend also is set to use "dutch" then it shows the modified labels. Maybe you can try the same approach and duplicate an existing folder, but surely there must be a dutch translation for ZenCart already? You probably don't want to translate the entire shop.

hboswijk:

2. Importing the sample book data resulted in an error (this was before I installed a german language pack for Zencart), and then some of the fields were imported (title, description), others were not (authors, publishers were replaced by authors and publishers I had already entered). But maybe this was due to my messing around with the dutch translation. I will try a new clean install of it all to check this out.

I will look into that again, the sample data import has not received enough attention from me, since it was just a way to let me (and you!) test the installs without having to create books, authors, publishers etc. every time.

hboswijk:

3. The order of the custom fields is now: (Is this image visible?)
   In text: Subtitle, Publishing date, Volume no., No. of pages, Size, Publisher, Series, Author(s), Binding.
   A more logical order would be (certainly for me as a former librarian :smile:), including not yet available (nya) fields: Subtitle, Author(s), Edition (nya), Publisher, Publishing date, No. of pages, Size, Series, Volume no., Annotation (nya, could go in Description), ISBN (nya?), Keywords (nya).
   It will probably be difficult to find a solution that fits everybody. I wonder if it is critical enough to add a sort order mechanism or if that just makes everything too complicated. If you know just a little bit of HTML, then you can reorder the fields inside the "collect_info.php" file in the ADMIN. I could mark the start and end of a field entry with <!-- comments -->, so that it is clear what to move around?
   Arguably, the Series and Volume No. have more to do with the Title and Subtitle of the book and should be close together?
   ISBN is implemented in the upcoming release.
   Could Keywords go into the product specific META TAG keywords? They would make sense there and it should be possible to add a way to include them in BookX searches or cross-references. What do you think about that?
   I wouldn't have use for an "Edition" field, so in your scenario, does this have to be a free entry field for administrator text or could you also define a list of options to choose via pop-up? The way it is now, pop-ups e.g. for genres or publishers only show up on the "collect_info" page, when there are genres or publishers defined for BookX. This way, if a shop is not using them, they don't get in the way. If that were the same for "Edition" I could very well see adding this field.

hboswijk:

4. The Publishing date field now requires a real date, but just a year will do fine, as day and month are normally unknown.

Good point. I will check out the Calendar plugin used by ZC, to see if a year & month only selection is working or if it needs to be entered by hand. Anyway, this should be working as you suggest.

hboswijk:

About the front:
5. I created some author types (main author, editor, illustrator, translator). In the product listing they don't show up in the right sorting order, and anyway just the main author would be enough there. (in Opera that is, in IE9 only the main author is shown ?)

I will check to make sure sorting order is respected in the product listing view. To only show one and not the others will be tricky.
I will need to do something similar myself with "Series" and I am using custom code to only display sort orders smaller than say 1000. We could do something like that for product listing, or will it be confusing?

hboswijk:

6. In the single product view, part of the information is shown twice: once below the title, and once more under the description (publisher and authors).

I think I know what you mean. The Product Info page was still very crude in the first BETA. I have polished it a bit, but it's not yet brilliant. Eventually it needs to look nice to go online, so we should have something that is accepatble for most users.

hboswijk:

7. The Book filters box in the sidebar shows information from the box above it, under the header, above the filters.
   See: https://www.hbprojecten.nl/hbwinkel

Since I took some time to respond to your post :-%, you seem to have changed your shop settings. In any case I don't see the problem you describe. However I remember that I did have a similar problem here a while ago (after release of first BETA) and I fixed it, so maybe that also resolves your issue.

I hope to get back onto this job quickly, but my attention has been diverted by another project, which puts some bread on the table ;-)

Best,
philou

Hi, you,
I used the beta 0.9 and I now wanted to correct with the last release 0.9.1 but there is no way to proceed to the update via admin>>tools.
is there any one who tried the same thing, and what's the come up ?
please help !

Hi habib_bou,

you discovered a bug in the installation script. It looks like the update script runs, but "forgets" to update the version of BookX, so it says that the update failed.
Anyway, I have uploaded a fixed version at the sourceforge site: https://sourceforge.net/projects/zencartbookx/files/

The only file that has changed is ADMIN/includes/init_includes/init_product_type_bookx.php so you can also just update that file in your shop and then it should run (at least it does here).

Can you please confirm that this works for you, so I can update it here on the Zen cart site as well. The submission process here is a bit longer, so I'd like to know that it works first...

Greetings,
p.

Hi Philou,
Thank you for the feedback; I'll try it and keep you advised of all the process.
I'll make the sandbox for you and for all for this ad-on ( for the benefit of all the zenner community ) untill we come up with a hard rock script ( cause I think there are few other things that I 'd like to see fixed - I'll talk to you about in my next post)
Thanks again
H.

I tried it and here's what I get ( same as previous try ): "WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again."
Another thing;
The product description shows in list but not in detail page.
It a little bit messy, philou.
If you don't find the bug, it could be caused by me, due to the integration of several other plugins.
I like your ad-on , it's pretty pro to show all details about a book; but I'am wondering about those few interferences with other plugins that could make the whole thing instable.
Thank you for all the efforts your putting in it.

Another thing:
The title and the subtitle of the book don't show anymore in the detail product page !!!
see what I get:
http://5000ebooks.com/wiseme/index.php?main_page=product_bookx_info&cPath=26_49&products_id=73&number_of_uploads=0&language=en#.UdNkJ0e4KjY

I notice also that your putting the price almost hidden ( small character and in the bottom ); is it on purpose ? could you make it on the top before the description and with Larger font ( like in zencart basic template ? ) , this is not a big deal but for an online shop, I think the price is quite important

Hi Habib,

I have tried what I could think of, but I can't reproduce any errors here. Can you find out more about the error? Please look in your "cache" directory for any DEBUG logs which will tell us more about the error than what is shown in the shop. If no DEBUG logs are there, make sure the "cache" directory is wirtable.

habib_bou:

I tried it and here's what I get ( same as previous try ): "WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again."
Another thing;
The product description shows in list but not in detail page.
It a little bit messy, philou.
If you don't find the bug, it could be caused by me, due to the integration of several other plugins.
I like your ad-on , it's pretty pro to show all details about a book; but I'am wondering about those few interferences with other plugins that could make the whole thing instable.
Thank you for all the efforts your putting in it.

Hm, yes you are right, but don't worry it will be there in the next version which I may release rather soon.
It also moves the price up a bit higher on the page. The size of the price can then be styled with CSS so you can make it look how you want.

habib_bou:

Another thing:
The title and the subtitle of the book don't show anymore in the detail product page !!!
see what I get:
http://5000ebooks.com/wiseme/index.php?main_page=product_bookx_info&cPath=26_49&products_id=73&number_of_uploads=0&language=en#.UdNkJ0e4KjY

habib_bou:

I notice also that your putting the price almost hidden ( small character and in the bottom ); is it on purpose ? could you make it on the top before the description and with Larger font ( like in zencart basic template ? ) , this is not a big deal but for an online shop, I think the price is quite important

thank u philou.
looking forwards to the next release

Hi, I'm trying ZC to see if it can replace the current e-commerce system my organisation is using, and this plugin is exactly what I have been looking for to fill the requirements of our publications dept. - but I was wondering:

the text description field is not visible in the procucts detail page, and we desperately need that. Is that
intentional? If it could be added to any new version that would be fantastic.

I would love an extra description field as well :D

/Magda

Hi Magda,

the description field on the product info page was somehow lost on the last update, but it is supposed to be there and it will return in the next release. I have left the product info page beautification for last, since I wanted to get the underlying framework to be fairly final first. Expect a new release in the next weeks.

An extra description field would not be too difficult to add, but can you expand on what it would be used for? I try to keep the functionality as universal as possible, so I want to be sure it makes sense for most people before adding it for everybody.

Excellent news, thank you so much! We would ideally like to separate the more general book description info from a "Detailed Contents" field (where you can list chapter headings, or even embed your Scribd code to display publication in full text - for example see http://books.sipri.org/product_info?c_product_id=463).

By the way, I can't seem to find the "Products URL" field either on this page?

/Magda

philou:

Hi Magda,

the description field on the product info page was somehow lost on the last update, but it is supposed to be there and it will return in the next release. I have left the product info page beautification for last, since I wanted to get the underlying framework to be fairly final first. Expect a new release in the next weeks.

An extra description field would not be too difficult to add, but can you expand on what it would be used for? I try to keep the functionality as universal as possible, so I want to be sure it makes sense for most people before adding it for everybody.

Hi Magda,

I am wondering if your extra description field wouldn't be better accomplished by finding a ZC add-on which adds an extra field to products. There is for example this: http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=926
I think it should not be very difficult to combine this with the bookx admin interface since the collect_info.php of bookx also loads any PHP files in the directory admin/includes/modules/product_bookx which begin with "collect_info". I can help you with this if you decide to go this way.

In fact I am considering using the "extra fields" plugin for my own bookx online shop, since it includes PDF and Flash previews, so possibly I can post a full solution to combining this plugin with bookx.

When you write that you can't see the "product url" do you mean the "manufacturer url" which is entered on the admin "collect_info" page? It shows a field for this for a bookx type product in admin "collect_info", but it's true that it is currently not saving it nor is it showing up on the "tpl_product_bookx_info_display.php" page. I will fix that. Are we speaking about the same thing here?

I hope to wrap up the next release over the weekend, so if you have any comments let me know asap :)

Best,
p.

Hi,

new version 0.9.2 is available for download on Sourcefoge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/zencartbookx/files
Please leave a quick word here if its working for you, so I can submit it to this site as well.

Best,
p.

Good show. I'm waiting for some feedback from users before jumping in. Keep up the energy guys.