osCommerce Blog

Some updates were backported today to the osCommerce 2.2 development branch regarding the Backup Manager section on the Administration Tool.

The problem that was addressed was that the contents of the sessions database table was being restored from an earlier state when the backup was made. This behaviour could introduce a conflict in session data when a database restoration would merge the session data if an earlier session ID is currently in use again.

The chances of this occurring would be rare and has been fixed so that the backup logic does not store the contents of the sessions database table in the sql dump, and the restoration logic clears the sessions table when an import is performed.

The changes here will be included in the next 2.2 Milestone 2 update package, and can be manually performed by reviewing commit r1274.

Hi All! It’s been a while since my last blogging entry so here is a quick wrap-up of what has been happening.

We’re still working hard on the 3.0 Alpha 4 release and wanted to have gotten the final 3.0 release ready at the end of 2006. The features on the roadmap for the 3.0 release are not what is extending the 3.0 release schedule, but the core framework that is continually being improved on during the alpha release development cycle.

The current ticket (OSC-23) being worked on implements batch capabilities to the Administration Tool and is being programmed together with a major framework update. This brings in a more OOP approach to the Administration Tool that matches the Catalog side, and opens opportunities for the core and for add-ons to take advantage of, especially by means of administrative RPC calls.

This is the last major framework update that will be worked on for the 3.0 release, where cleaning-up and polishing will occur during Alpha 5 and Alpha 6.

We’re looking at releasing 3.0 Alpha 4 by the end of the month, and Alpha 5 and 6 quickly thereafter.

I will also post new movies showing some new features on the Administration Tool but this will wait until ticket OSC-23 is finalized.

Frank Heinen has joined the development group in the team and has been of great help with taking care of reported tickets/issues and being active in the community. Our priority is getting the Alpha 4 release finalized, and look forward to working closer with additional developers as soon as it is released to help with future releases.

Over to the community support forums, the forum software was upgraded today and also brings in a change to the representation of the team to the community. All team members usernames have been changed to their real names, and will also incorporate photos of themselves in their user profiles. To keep a reference, the username changes are:

hpdl -> Harald Ponce de Leon
241 -> Stephen Bissett
BlueNoteMKVI -> Chris Dunning
F.R.@.N.K -> Frank Heinen
wendyjames -> Wendy James
modom -> Melinda Odom
The_Bear -> Pierre Rollin
wheeloftime -> Howard van der Burgt
andyy15 -> Andrew Yuen

Please report any unusual problems introduced with the forum software upgrade in the Project Feedback channel on the forums (or directly to a team member if you can’t view the forums at all now ). Please be sure to refresh your browsers cache as there may be some minor CSS or javascript issues.

On the personal side, my responsibilities have increased by being a proud owner of a dwarf-hamster. This was a christmas present given to me and was presented as “I-Ham: Internet Capable Hamster” It’s nice seeing her run around in her environment when I’m still working late at night

PHP 5.2.0 was recently released which “includes a large number of new features, bug fixes and security enhancements” to the PHP 5.x series. The PHP Group also published an upgrade guide for existing PHP 5 users that documents the (incompatibility) changes the new release brings.

osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 Update 060817 works fine with PHP 5.2.0 (with register_globals and register_long_arrays enabled).

There is however one change that 5.2.0 brings in that causes osCommerce 3.0 Alpha 3 to produce a PHP FATAL error in the sessions implementation, specifically when the session data is stored in the database (by default for osCommerce 3.0).

This is due to a change in session_set_save_handler() where the “write” and “close” handlers are called after objects have been destructed.

As the sessions implementation in osCommerce 3.0 is done in a class/object, writing session data and closing the session are no longer possible as the registered object would be destructed and no longer exist to perform those duties.

The proper solution here is to use session_write_close() in the destructor of the osC_Session class:

class osC_Session {
  ...
 
  function __destruct() {
    session_write_close();
  }
}

As __destruct() is a PHP 5 feature only, an alternative solution is needed for PHP 4 compatibility (the minimum requirement for osCommerce 3.0 will be PHP 4.1), and that is to register session_write_close() as a shutdown function:

session_set_save_handler(array(&$this, '_open'),
                         array(&$this, '_close'),
                         array(&$this, '_read'),
                         array(&$this, '_write'),
                         array(&$this, '_destroy'),
                         array(&$this, '_gc'));
 
register_shutdown_function('session_write_close');

This has already been reported at our new Issue Tracker and has been fixed at r1107.

The Commit Policy for developers has been updated to describe the process of referencing tickets on Jira when the changes involved solve that ticket.

http://svn.oscommerce.com/confluence/x/JQ

When viewing a ticket on Jira, the referenced commit changes will be automatically shown under the “Fisheye” tab where the comments are shown.

The Repository Browser (Fisheye) also automatically links to the tickets when referenced in the commit log.

The Trac solution on the Development Site that was responsible for the wiki, tickets, and repository browser has been replaced due to the persistent problems it had on the server. The Development Site is now running on 3 new “enterprise-class” solutions that provide more features and flexibility in fostering the developer community.

The solutions now taking care of the wiki, tickets, and repository browser are:

• Confluence (Wiki)
• Jira (Tickets)
• Fisheye (Repository Browser)

Each can be easily reached at:

http://svn.oscommerce.com

The contents of the previous Trac installation have been migrated over to the new wiki and ticket sites. Please note that the accounts created previously for Trac are no longer used, and that a new account has to be created on Jira if tickets are to be submitted or tracked. Please also be sure to replace your Trac RSS subscription feeds to the new feeds each solution provides.

A hardware upgrade of more memory is also pending due to the extra resources the solutions place on the server. These are Java based solutions running on 2 Tomcat application servers; one for Confluence and Jira, and one for Fisheye (which currently requires its own application server), and are being served by the Apache webserver.

The Apache webserver has been tuned due to it basically acting as a proxy server. It was infact about to be replaced by lighttpd but realized that Apache is still needed due to the subversion repository. I am personally still interested in seeing what benefits lighttpd can bring in this setup and will look into it again in the coming weeks.

With the new Wiki site now live and running we are also contemplating moving the content from the Knowledge Base site over to it. Due to the content on the Knowledge Base site being based on current development versions, moving it over to the Development Site will make it a perfect fit where all development related work can be found on the one site. This would then leave the oscommerce.info domain serving static documentation that is produced by the Wiki site for the stable releases.

A change to the Tickets site has also been performed where it will be possible to submit tickets regarding language definitions and developer branches. This has been started on the languages with the developers that have already created user accounts on Jira, and will include the other developers as soon as their accounts have been created. The benefit here is submitting a ticket in a specific category will automatically assign it to the developer working on the job.

The Repository Browser (Fisheye) is also a radical change compared to Trac and will take a few mouse clicks understanding how it works.

It’s fun looking at graphical representations of the amount of lines in the codebase with Fisheye. Additional statistical information regarding the development repository can be found at Ohloh:

http://next.ohloh.net/projects/3341

It’s currently only measuring /trunk/oscommerce and will look at updating it to /trunk/ to also include the languages being worked on.

Overall I’m very impressed with the new Development Site and therefore thank Atlassian (Jira, Confluence) and Cenqua (Fisheye) for making it possible by supplying free licenses to the solutions for Open Source projects

Other changes in our network infrastructure have also occurred the past week where the database server for the Community Support Forums was upgraded. A new faster dedicated server is also being currently prepared to move the German Community Support Forums over to from its current dedicated server. The total number of servers running the osCommerce Network of Support Sites is 5 dedicated servers, in addition Sunsite.dk and SourceForge who mirror the downloads for project releases and contribution files.

Some interesting facts I hope

I returned from a 3 week break on the weekend, yes just after getting 3.0 Alpha 3 out the door, and am in top spirits to continue full-time work again on osCommerce. I did not make any public statement about this as I had my notebook and mobile phone with me to be able to take care of important issues during this time.

This was the first experience for me at connecting online over a mobile phone and did not face any technical problems doing so. The only negative aspect I had with it was when checking my inboxes due to the amount of spam I receive. Even using IMAP and only downloading headers took a while to complete but was sufficient in picking out the emails that looked important enough.

I was also able to bring the development site up during this time after it crashed a couple of times. There is a threading problem with ClearSilver (which Trac depends on) and FreeBSD/AMD64 which occasionally causes the web server to crash. Fortunatly Trac have moved on to their own templating engine called Genshi which the developoment site has been recently updated to (0.11-dev). Although a risky move, I hope this brings an end to the downtime of the development site.

I mentioned briefly in a blogging entry in March that I would be going to Tegernsee/Bayern again in September for the Oktoberfest. I went for a week in March and was there again for 3 weeks this time. The major difference being ofcourse the seasonal change where everything was now green instead of white. And ofcourse what you order after a long walk (beer vs hot chocolate drink)

Here are two pictures of the same temple I took pictures of in March, on top of Wallberg mountain:

   

Now that the sea was free of ice I rented a small 2,000 watt electric boat and took it for a spin:

The Allianz Arena soccer stadium:

And ofcourse some pictures of the Oktoberfest:

(on the Star Flyer, about 50m high)

      

(on the Ferris Wheel)

   

(on the Olympia Roller Coaster (with 5 loopings), yep, look closer to see me on it )

I also went on the EuroStar Roller Coaster - both rides were too short in my opinion.

(on the Flying Circus (the ride I enjoyed most; and yep, look closer at around 39s to see me on it ))

mvi_0454.MOV

(me with a Maß in my mouth)

(follow these outside the tents to find the toilets)

With the fun and social experience at the Oktoberfest there was another experience that topped it that occurs normally in nature. After reaching a restaurant during one of our long walks through the forest, we were able to witness a group of young deers in an opening and were able to hear the adult deers deeper inside the forest. This was a rewarding experience after a long walk, enjoying a beer and seeing this not far from where we were seated:

mvi_3887.MOV

Overall a great holiday, and look forward to the next Oktoberfest next year

I’ve been spending this week catching up on work and will start committing some changes on the administration tool next week for the alpha 4 roadmap entries. I started on modularizing the administration tool during my break and look forward to finalizing the work involved as the access levels implementation depends on it. The modularization of the administration tool makes it even easier to install administrative contribution add-ons without the need to edit core source files.

In Germany we usually start to see Spekulatius in grocery stores around Christmas. This year seems to be different as Spekulatius has made an early appearance.

I’m not complaining about it - I just had to double check in my mind what month we were in. I ofcourse picked up a packet to buy

My acknowledgment that it was indeed too early for Spekulatius came at the checkout, where the cashier said “Wow, you can actually buy these now?”.

mmmmmm… Spekulatius dipped in coffee..

So, while I’m here enjoying some Spekulatius, I’m still hoping that the summer is not over just yet.

.. and what’s new on the development front? I’ve been doing some robot work of standardizing the framework and moving from the old tep_ function format towards the new osc_ namespace.

That isn’t just a simple search and replace one can do to rename tep_* functions to osc_* function names, as it would still be the same under the hood and wouldn’t warrant a milestone release to be made.

As an example, the general.php functions file has been slimmed down from ~48 functions to 18. The functions were either deprecated or moved to the new class definitions.

All html_output.php functions have been standardized, with the Catalog, Administration Tool, and Installation module all using the same file.

The address related functions have been moved to a new osC_Address class, and it is now actually possible to administrate the address formats. The format strings have been moved to the countries database table making it easier to administrate them.

This allows the address format to be very specific for the country it is assigned to. Examples here are European countries that add a country letter code in front of the post code (eg, D-54570 Kirchweiler, for Germany).

Nothing here can be shown in a movie though as the work being done is in the framework, which can all be seen over at the Development Site.

The 3.0 Alpha 3 release is also nearly ready and am looking forward to addressing features again for the Alpha 4 release.

mmmmm.. Spekulatius…

I haven’t yet found a suitable “diff” application for the Mac that is as good as Beyond Compare for Windows. Under Linux it isn’t a problem as Beyond Compare can run fine under a Wine environment, which is unfortunately not available on the PPC platform.

As the unix “diff” program is commonly available, I followed up its manpage to see what parameters were available to adequately report a listing of different files within two separate directories. The following command meets my demands appropriately:

diff -rq --ignore-matching-lines=$Id: --exclude=.svn --exclude=.DS_Store dir1 dir2

This recursively scans dir1 and dir2 to list different files, while ignoring “$Id:” strings within files and “.svn” directories. Any (Mac specific) “.DS_Store” directories are also excluded from the listing.

I created an alias for this to save retyping the whole command each time I need it:

alias oscdiff='diff -rq --ignore-matching-lines=$Id: --exclude=.svn --exclude=.DS_Store $1 $2'

I can then use that as simple as:

oscdiff dir1 dir2

This helps me when I work on my own development branch and when it is time to commit to /trunk/, can make sure that all changes have been merged over.

I just experienced another nasty PHP4 / PHP5 compatibility issue that plagued the logging features of the support site administration tool (which is planned to be introduced in the 3.0 Alpha 4 release).

The implementation uses the strrpos() function to grab the end of a string from a string searched starting point. The opposite function is strpos() that searches from the start of the string instead from the end.

The string to search for, the needle, can be a character or a string for the normal strpos() function in both PHP 4 and PHP 5.

There is however a difference with the strrpos() function where PHP 4 accepts the needle as a character only, and can first be a string from PHP 5 onwards.

This took some time to debug where my local server is running on PHP 5 with the logging features working fine, and the support site running PHP 4 where the issue was first evident.

There is a warning about this on the documentation page which I overlooked during the implementation phase. Such incompatibility warnings should be marked with the infamous <blink> tag so they stand out better

The positive side to this is the valuable user comments on the php documentation pages where numerous functions are provided to workaround the problem.

Workaround functions are obviously not elegant solutions to use, and will look at improving the logic further for the 3.0 Alpha 4 release.

I haven’t been actively online the past few weeks but have been pretty busy offline, and will blog about the past few weeks soon. For now I’m keeping this entry focused on showcasing the multiple product images feature that is finalized and ready to be fine-tuned.

The idea behind the implementation is to define image groups with their relevant sizes and to resize all images in each image group. The primary image group is an “Originals” group that holds the base image to resize from (ie, the largest image size).

The initial implementation was to form an image to image group relationship to only resize images in relevant groups to save on disk space on the server. This relationship was later removed to have images resized in all groups as disk space is cheap, and it’s cool to show a bunch of images ready for viewing when needed.

There are so far 5 image groups defined as default:

Originals
Thumbnails (default)
Product Information Page
Large
Mini

The Thumbnails group is defined as the default group which is shown throughout the catalog. The Product Information Page group is slighly larger than the Thumbnails group and is used on the product information page only. The Large group is larger than the Product Information Page group and is used for the popup window to show the single product image in more detail, or to view additional images of the product. The Mini group was added in last to be used in the You’ve Recently Visited module, and is smaller than the Thumbnails group size.

It’s up to the template on how the images are shown on the product information page. Traditionally it has only shown one image to click on for a larger view, and is now easily possible to show additional images on the product information page relating to a group, with or without the need for a popup-click-to-enlarge feature.

For the default template one image is still being shown on the product information page, and has its popup window dynamically sized depending if additional images exist or not. If the product only has one image defined, the popup window is sized specifically to the Large image. If multiple images exists, the popup window is sized accordingly to fit in a 2 column Thumbnail view and a larger view of the selected product image.

The administration part is really fun to work with, but will need to have user interface issues addressed as the edit product page is a form that needs to be submited to save any changes, where the actions on product images occur instantly with AJAX (uploading, deleting, and drag-and-drop sorting).

An additional issue exists of an iframe being used to handle the file uploads, due to forms not being able to be nested. Due to the tabs on the page, FireFox sometimes does not show the iframe (file upload form) until the tab is clicked on again, and Safari also has some issues with not uploading the file occasionally.

Otherwise it is working great and is really fun to play with

Here is a movie showcasing the multiple product images feature:

osc30a3_product_images.mov

Yes, if you’re not following the RSS Timeline feed on the development site, this work is in /trunk/