Issue #8: June 11, 2002

By Harald Ponce de Leon

June 11, 2002

Improved Performance With cPath
Integers As Strings Which Begin With 0
iPayment Payment Module Updated
New Country State/Zone Selection Logic
Product Popup Image And Javascript
Recent Spamming Issues
Visual / User Interface Updates
Tax Calculations -> Shipping vs Billing Address

Improved Performance With cPath

David Garcia Watkins has updated the tep_get_product_path() function (which calculates the category path to a product) by removing it altogether.

Now, as soon as a product ID is present as a HTTP GET parameter, the category path (if not provided) is calculated.

The performance comes from the unnecessary database queries that were being made on a per product basis that were shown on the page.

Integers As Strings Which Begin With 0

Integers or numbers that are stored in the database as strings can now be inserted safely with 0 at the beginning.

This is particuarly needed in some instances of telephone numbers and post codes.

iPayment Payment Module Updated

Jan Wildeboer has updated the German iPayment payment module to work with their new v2 interface - iPayment no longer support the v1 interface.

Please note the updated module is not compatible with the v1 interface.

New Country And State/Zone Selection Logic

David Garcia Watkins has worked on a new state/zone selection logic which removes the loading of oversized javascript code attached to the page.

The javascript used for controlling the country and state/zone pull down menus grew as more countries and states/zones were added to the database.

The new logic replaces the state/zone pull down menu (and extra input field) with a normal text input field. When the form is submitted, php logic checks the state/zone against the available [selected] countrys states/zones and takes appropriate action.

If no states/zones are attached to the country, the state/zone is inserted into the customer table.

If one match is found, the match is inserted into the customer table.

If there are no matches, or if there is more than one match found, the customer is presented with a pull down menu with available states/zones to choose from.

Since the javascript logic is no longer needed, it is now possible to insert as many states/zones into the database as possible.

Product Popup Image And Javascript

The javascript logic for the product popup image has been updated to also work with browsers that have javascript disabled.

If javascript is disabled, the link on the image turns to a normal page link.

This small issue has been addressed to keep osCommerce compatible across a variety of clients (which includes working with cookies and javascript enabled or disabled).

Recent Spamming Issues

Recently the store owners who added their stores to the Live Shops section were spammed with commercial advertising from a company located in Germany.

Although the company is in no relation with osCommerce, we apologize that such an event had to take place.

Appropriate actions on the support site have been taken to try and prevent further spamming issues from occuring.

We highly stress that we do not endorse spam, and take your privacy as a serious matter.

Visual / User Interface Updates

As part of the standard updates currently occuring on the Catalog module, various pages have had their layout updated to provide a richer interaction with the customer.

The updated layouts include the login page, the order history page, and the order history information page.

Tax Calculations -> Shipping vs Billing Address

The new flexible tax calculation logic has been commited into the CVS repository which should address most store owners needs and at the same time be compatible country to country, zone to zone.

One of the last issues to address is adding the option to calculate the tax either from the billing address or the shipping address.