drupal

I have been using uc_cano on a few Ubercart sites and found that it is a great module for restricting attributes combinations when one attribute only makes sense if a certain option is selected on another attribute. Unfortunately, the module is very minimally maintained and there are many bugs present in the most recent release. Several community patches have shown up to fix some of the issues, but they need to be mixed and matched to get a working module. Furthermore, out of the box uc_cano is not compatible with the uc_node_checkout nor uc_aac modules.

In order to future centralize development efforts, facilitate releases and maintain a more up-to-date code base, I have collected the various community contributions plus written several fixes of my own and forked uc_cano as uc_conditional_attributes, now available on Drupal.org at http://drupal.org/project/uc_conditional_attributes. I hope you enjoy the new module! A dev release is available and I am hoping to add the first stable release soon after two known bugs are taken care of.

Some the changes I have made to cano include:

• Rewrite of the JavaScript code and the addition of hooks
• Addition of a new hooks & preliminary API for other modules to use
• Compatibility with uc_aac (patch also required to uc_aac until it gets accepted upstream)
• Compatibility with uc_node_checkout

I have been working closely with a company in the United States called Grindflow Management LLC (grindflow.com) on several Web projects including a few Drupal sites. I'm excited to say that over the holidays I had a chance to finally put together some of the patches and modules we worked on! More details on each below.

Patches

• Add support for simultaneous display of multiple product nodes on one page. (#1377310)
  This patch for uc_option_images resolves the problem where uc_option_image would cease to function if multiple nodes were displayed on one page (for example, if promoted to the front page or if displayed in a View). The issue here was that drupal_add_js() in Drupal 6.x has an annoying bug (feature?) where array_merge_recursive() is used when the same JavaScript settings data is added multiple times. The code that generates the settings in uc_option_image (validly) has no idea if you're going to be displaying one node or ten, so each time the settings data for a node is generated is must be merged and the merging caused all sorts of weird duplicate data with invalid offsets. The workaround to the drupal_add-js() problem was to use a static array to ensure that the global settings only get added once, and to use string key indexes for the node settings data so that array_merge_recursive() would not attempt to merge them as numerical indexes.
• UC Option Image doesn't work with required attributes (#1377310)
  This bug, also in uc_option_images, was due to the fact that the uc_option_image attempts to analyst the first attribute and preload the set option image for its default value if applicable. The problem with required attributes is that they don't have a default value, so an attempt to generate the default image would always fail. This failure meant that there was no HTML img element generated, so future calls to switch the option image also failed since there was no img element to operate on in the first place. Fixed by defaulting to the 'no image' if analyzing the first attribute fails.
• Compatibility with Ubercart Ajax Attribute Calculations module (#1377310)
  Yet another one for uc_option_image, this patch adds uc_aac compatibility by changing uc_option_image's JavaScript code to work with Drupal Behaviours. Previously, the code would only run once upon page load so when uc_aac changed the DOM, uc_option_image would break. Using Drupal Behaviours also means paying attention to the 'context' variable, which also played a role in making multiple products on a single page work.
• Some hooks and form handlers have not been updated for Drupal 6 (#1377310)
  The uc_invite_discount was originally written for 5.x and many portions were not updated for Drupal 6.x, leaving it rather broken. This patch fixed these issues and made it confirm to 6.x code style standards.
• Preserve attributes from product form when redirecting anonymous users to node checkout form after logging in (#1376864)
  This bug in uc_node_checkout makes it so that anonymous users logging in get redirected back to the product configuration form with the attribute data preserved. Prior to this patch, users would get redirected to the node successfully but their selection of attributes was erased and they would have to start over.

Modules

• Ubercart Attribute Per Role: http://drupal.org/project/uc_attribute_per_role
  This project allows site administrators to choose attributes that they would like hidden from display based on the user's active roles. For example, a 'gift wrap' attribute could be shown to retail (anonymous/authenticated) users but a definition could be added to hide this attribute for members of the 'wholesaler' role.

• Clean Module List: http://drupal.org/project/clean_module_list
  This module is a very simple module that with the help from a bit of JavaScript, hides the dependency information (Depends on/Requires/Required by) in the module list and provides a controls to dynamically show/hide the information without a page reload. It can be used in conjunction with module_filter to provide an even cleaner and more searchable module list.
• Ubercart Chained Attributes and Options (CANO): http://drupal.org/sandbox/firewing1/1374824
  This sandbox is the temporary home for the uc_cano project until I promote it to a full project. It is the continued development of the original module posted by Vizteck Solutions here. The code base is rather stagnant at the moment and I have a few bug fixes and feature improvements planned, so I am in touch with the original sponsor and developers of the module to ensure that all parties agree to move the new code to Drupal.org.
• Ubercart Pay After Checkout: http://drupal.org/sandbox/firewing1/1229572
  I have written about this one before, uc_payafter allows users to pay for a product after checkout. It supports a configurable set of checkout panes just like the original checkout process does, so you can choose which panes appear during the initial checkout and during the payment (payafter) checkout processes. I am hoping to get the chance to refactor some of the code soon to reduce code duplication. Once that's done, I will promote it to a full project.

Hurray, another semester of school finished. Sorry for being such a hermit lately... Second half of the semester didn't leave me with much spare time between assignments and work.

That said, please do check back in a few days for a new post! I have a bit of a queue to work through for the holiday break, but I have a several new Drupal modules written and several more patches that I will be uploading to drupal.org and writing about here.

I have been working with a client to setup an Ubercart store customized to their needs and one of the things we came across as we launched the store is that because of the nature of the items being sold, it was very difficult to give a accurate shipping estimate. Thus, I set off to find a way to enable customer payments after checkout and to enter the shipping quotes manually.

These two modules, uc_manual_shipping and uc_payafter, are the fruit of these efforts. I hope you find them useful!

Note that this is my first release of these modules and the code should be considered a beta and work in progress. They are untested so far and not recommended for use on a production site just yet. All information about installation, configuration and further development is available in the README.txt file, DEVELOPERS.txt file and/or source code comments. If you have made some changes or improvements, please let me know in the comments! I would love to hear about your changes and I would be more than happy to apply any patches or bugfixes.

uc_manual_shipping enables the store administrators to manually enter shipping quotes on orders after a user has passed through checkout. It can be used in combination with uc_payafter to have users create go through regular checkout without paying, and then pay later once a shipping quote has been submitted by a store administrator.
Download uc_manual_shipping-6.x-1.0.tar.gz

uc_payafter duplicates the checkout process and allows users to perform payments on their orders after checkout at the URL cart/checkout/pay/$ORDER_ID. Store administrators can email users different invoice templates after payment.
Download uc_payafter-6.x-1.1.tar.gz

Update 2011-06-08: A user in the comments, Moises, has pointed out that in the 6.x-1.0 release of uc_payafter there was a typo that would prevent users from being able to select the request shipping invoices in the conditional actions configuration. I have updated uc_payafter below to fix this bug.

Update 2011-11-08: uc_payafter has a new home! I have created a Drupal Sandbox project for the code here. Once I have the chance to work on the code a bit more, I will promote it to full project status and update the download links in this post.

I'm going to be upgrading this blog to D7 soon so I can experiment a bit with a live install... Sorry if there's some (brief) unexpected downtime!

Edit 2011-02-26: It's up and running! Not the most pleasant upgrade experience, but then again I can't complain too much for a point-zero release. Most of the issues were caused by third-party modules (namely Fivestart Comment and CKEditor). Also, as a reminder to those who are using custom color styles on a Drupal theme: changes in the theme's CSS will only take effect *after* you save the theme settings to re-generate the theme CSS! I spent about 50 minutes trying to figure out why any CSS changes were not being applied until it hit me and /facepalm ensued...

Edit 2011-03-01: Just realized that the howto indexes (which use Views) were completely broken until now. Sorry about that! It's been fixed now, although the formatting (mostly page breaks) are rather broken on the howto pages themselves, I'll have to clean that up next week.

I'm going to be testing a module that emails commenters when there has been a reply.

It has been a while since I last wrote about Ubercart, but I'm still working on some multi-lingual stores for clients. I have opted for disabling the stock Catalog module and using Views instead since Views is so much more flexible and easier to theme. I have a very simple setup; some terms in a vocabulary that is localized per-term, and then a custom View that takes a term name as an argument and returns nodes belonging to that term and displays them in a nicely themed grid.

Recently, I ran into an irritating issue where the View would return results from the wrong language if two languages had the same term name. After hours of investigating (and learning all about how to implement View handlers and plugins), it seems that the stock taxonomy term argument validator for Views cannot differentiate between terms of the same name in different languages. So if multiple languages contain the term "Stewart Adam" for example, the view will just returns nodes for whichever term (and therefore language) comes first in the database query. To be fair, the i18n module adds the "language" column to the term_data table so it's not really View's fault... Nonetheless, I was surprised that the i18n module had not already corrected this issue.

I've just reported Drupal issue #832100, Taxonomy term argument validator should not validate terms defined in other languages that includes a fix to the problem by limiting query for term names to terms within the active language. It's not the greatest way to go about solving it since it essentially just copies the original validator and makes two tiny modifications in the SQL query, but it's better then modifying the View module directly.

My "v1" Joomla 1.0.15 blog is almost a year old now and support for 1.x has been phased out, so for security reasons I think it's a good idea to finally take it offline. I've been able to import the old content here and I've also setup URL remaps, so you shouldn't notice a thing. Although if you are having trouble with a specific URL, please leave a comment and I'll fix the hole in the regex remapping rules.

My trial enabling node comments went pretty well, I did have to handle the inevitable comment spam but there was nothing outrageous - only about one bogus comment a day. With comments being published only after approval they're extremely easy to spot as well, since typically the spammer will post the same comment twice or more once they realize "hey, it hasn't appeared on the page yet!"

So because of comments are functioning well I've just enabled some new features for my blog - namely, you can now leave your name & homepage when you leave a comment, although due to homepage spamming I've disabled all homepage links in the site theme until I find a better solution. As well, you'll notice the new rating widget (thanks to VotingAPI and Fivestar) on every node - feel free to leave any feedback or ratings on any of the blog or tutorial posts. Thanks!

Since my update to Snow Leopard, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Apple has updated PHP to version 5.3 and also included the GD extension. While I no longer have to rebuild the extension manually like on Leopard, these changes to PHP brought around a different problem: Drupal is currently not compatible with PHP 5.3 (#360605).

I've been trying to get my local Drupal installations working, and although the patch from post #84 works pretty well (when applied to a D6 CVS checkout), Ubercart is still nonfunctional. Since I am currently building and testing Ubercart-enabled sites, my only remaining option was to downgrade to PHP 5.2.10. I wanted to have the same extensions and options that Apple's PHP 5.3 build had, so I started by viewing the output of phpinfo() and copying the configure command. To compile PHP, locally installed copies of libpng, libjpeg and pcre are required so let's started with that:

1. (Like in the Leopard tutorial, I assume you have installed the Xcode & related developer utilities and that all downloads are saved in the "Downloads" folder in your home). Visit the libpng, libjpeg and PCRE homepages and download the latest release available for both. As of writing, the most recent releases are libjpeg 7, libpng 1.2.39 and PCRE 7.9.
2. Compile libpng and libjpeg statically:
   
   cd ~/Downloads && tar xfz libpng-1.2.39.tar.gz
   cd libpng-1.2.39
   ./configure --disable-shared --enable-static
   make && make install DESTDIR=`pwd`/localinstall

   cd ~/Downloads && tar xfz jpegsrc.v7.tar.gz
   cd jpeg-7
   ./configure --disable-shared --enable-static
   make && make install DESTDIR=`pwd`/localinstall

   cd ~/Downloads && tar xfj pcre-7.9.tar.bz2
cd pcre-7.9
./configure --disable-shared --enable-static
make && make install DESTDIR=`pwd`/localinstall

3. Since PHP will be built with MySQL support, download and install MySQL x86_64 for OS X. As of writing, the latest version is 5.1.38.
4. Download PHP 5.2.10, available here
5. Next, PHP needs to be prepared for compilation. As detailed in PHP bug #49267, a small change is required to get PHP to compile on Snow Leopard:
   1. Type in the terminal:
      
      cd ~/Downloads && tar xfj php-5.2.10.tar.bz2
cd php-5.2.10
nano ext/iconv/iconv.c
   2. Skip down to line 185 (Tip: <ctrl+c> shows current line)
   3. Remove the lib on #define iconv libiconv so that the code reads like this:
      
      #ifdef HAVE_LIBICONV
#define iconv iconv
#endif
   4. Hit <ctrl+o> and to save the file
   5. Hit <ctrl+x> to quit nano
6. Now, PHP is ready for compilation. We will use a configure command relatively similar to the command extracted from phpinfo() earlier:
   
   ./configure '--prefix=/usr' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--disable-dependency-tracking' '--sysconfdir=/private/etc' '--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--enable-cli' '--with-config-file-path=/etc' '--with-libxml-dir=/usr' '--with-openssl=/usr' '--with-kerberos=/usr' '--with-zlib=/usr' '--enable-bcmath' '--with-bz2=/usr' '--enable-calendar' '--with-curl=/usr' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/Users/shortname/Downloads/jpeg-7/localinstall/usr/local' '--with-png-dir=/Users/shortname/Downloads/libpng-1.2.39/localinstall/usr/local' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--with-ldap=/usr' '--with-ldap-sasl=/usr' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-mbregex' '--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql/' '--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config' '--with-mysql-sock=/tmp/mysql.sock' '--with-iodbc=/usr' '--enable-shmop' '--with-snmp=/usr' '--enable-soap' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvshm' '--with-xmlrpc' '--with-xsl=/usr' '--with-pcre-regex=/Users/shortname/Downloads/pcre-7.9/localinstall/usr/local'

   EXTRA_CFLAGS="-lresolv" make -j2

   Remember to replace shortname in /Users/shortname to your system account's shortname. If you're not sure what that is, type whoami in a terminal to find out.

7. Finally, backup Snow Leopard's PHP extension so that PHP 5.3 can be restored later, and copy the PHP 5.2.10 extension in its place:
   
   sudo mv /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so.orig106
sudo cp libs/libphp5.so /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
8. The final step is to restart Apache - this can be done by toggling Web Sharing in System Preferences, or alternatively via the apachectl command:
   sudo apachectl restart

That's all! Now run phpinfo() and verify that PHP 5.2.10 is up & running. While I was trying to get this working, I stumbled accross two compile errors - for the sake of completeness, I've listed them below along with the failure cause:

1. This error occurs if EXTRA_CFLAGS="-lresolv" is not used while compiling PHP:
   Undefined symbols:
  "_res_9_dn_expand", referenced from:
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
  "_res_9_search", referenced from:
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
      _zif_dns_check_record in dns.o
  "_res_9_dn_skipname", referenced from:
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
symbols:
  "_res_9_dn_expand", referenced from:
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
  "_res_9_search", referenced from:
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
      _zif_dns_check_record in dns.o
  "_res_9_dn_skipname"collect2: , referenced from:
      ld returned 1 exit status_zif_dns_get_mx
in dns.o
      _zif_dns_get_mx in dns.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
2. This error occurs if the #define iconv libiconv is not changed to #define iconv iconv
   
   Undefined symbols:
  "_libiconv", referenced from:
      __php_iconv_strlen in iconv.o
      _php_iconv_string in iconv.o
      _php_iconv_string in iconv.o
      __php_iconv_strpos in iconv.o
      __php_iconv_appendl in iconv.o
      __php_iconv_appendl in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_substr in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
      _php_iconv_stream_filter_append_bucket in iconv.o
      _php_iconv_stream_filter_append_bucket in iconv.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status