Issue #34: February 26, 2004

By Harald Ponce de Leon

February 26, 2004

Discussions regarding this progress report can be found here:

https://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=80892

Netherlands Meeting Location
Progress Summary Reports
Adding Non-Existing Products To Cart
Workboard: European Legislations Update
Workboard: More Use Of Classes
Authorize.net Payment Module Officially Authorized
Installation Routine Updated
Daily Snapshots Update

Netherlands Public Meeting Location

The location for the public meeting in Amsterdam has been made public in the meeting discussion thread in the community forums.

The public meeting will be held at:

TODRINK bar - Hotel Arena
's-Gravesandestraat 51
Amsterdam

https://www.hotelarena.nl

Date: Saturday 28th February
Time: 15.00 till +/- 20.30

More information can be found at the meeting discussion thread on the community forums:

https://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79141

Progress Summary Reports

The Weekly Summary Reports section has been renamed to Progress Summary Reports as reports recently have not been sent out in a weekly fashion.

Progress Summary Reports will be sent casually, containing announcements of recent project activities.

Adding Non-Existing Products To Cart

It is possible to add non-existing products in the shopping cart which would prevent the customer from removing fake entries from their shopping cart.

The following bug report and fix is for 2.2-MS1, 2.2-MS2, and 2.2-MS3-CVS:

https://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs,1617

Workboard: European Legislations Update

It is now possible to have a checkbox shown on the account creation page which would force the customer to agree to the privacy notice before their account can be created.

Related workboard entry:

https://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard,69

Workboard: More Use Of Classes

-Currencies Class

The currencies class has been updated to the new osC_[Class] standards, and improves performance by checking the product tax rate value when DISPLAY_PRICES_WITH_TAX is enabled.

Previously, the product tax rate value was retrieved regardless of the DISPLAY_PRICES_WITH_TAX value, causing extra database queries to be made (if that parameter was disabled) for each product price shown on a page.

-Database Class

The new database class has been added to CVS which not only strengthens the "parse user input and output" standards, but also introduces a new level of performance optimizations by being able to cache any database query with one extra line of PHP code.

The additional benefit this adds to the previous usage of "caching blocks" for intensive database queries, is that the result set to the query can be cached and used regardless if the session ID exists in the url. This is due to the result set being able to be cached, and not a HTML block containing http links that may contain the customers session ID when cookies are disabled on their browser.

As support for PHP 3 has been dropped, the option to enable or disable the caching framework has been removed with the caching framework being enabled at all times.

The database class framework includes the possibility to easily support databases other than MySQL via a database module structure. This will however be concentrated on after the 2.2 release has been finalized.

Debugging features have also been implemented in the database class, where queries can be viewed and timed on a per query basis or on a global scale, with an ID number shown on the page for an estimation of where the query was executed.

The new database class has only been started to be implemented in the codebase, with the current tep_db_*() functions accessing the class functions/methods to keep the catalog operational. The new database class will ultimately replace the tep_db_*() functions and will be complete in time for the MS-3 release.

API documentation for the new database class has been made available at the Wiki site:

https://www.oscommerce.com/wiki/apiClassesDatabase

-Caching Class

The new caching class has been added to CVS, which replaces the tep caching functions, and is able to cache variable values and data output (HTML).

API documentation for the new caching class has been made available at the Wiki site:

https://www.oscommerce.com/wiki/apiClassesCache

-Category Tree Class

A new category tree class has been added to CVS which is capable of structuring the category relationships with just one database query.

The new category tree class is used in the Categories box and the new Sitemap page.

Related workboard entry:

https://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard,47

Authorize.net Payment Module Officially Authorized

Authorize.net have officially authorized the Authorize.net payment module after changes have been made in CVS to confirm to their requirements.

As the changes have been made in CVS, the module will be available from 2.2-MS3 onwards.

Installation Routine Updated

The web based installation and upgrade module has been updated to be register_globals compatible, and is also now multilingual.

Spanish and German translations are pending.

The sample data can now optionally be imported in the database for new osCommerce installations, and the possibility of defining a database table prefix name has been provided.

Daily Snapshots Update

Daily snapshots now contain the date of the snapshot as part of the project version value.

This should help investigate problems when any arise.