osCommerce

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 was scheduled for release by the end of February and has been postponed to ensure the quality of the release. It will now be released on Wednesday the 11th of March. This release also brings in a new roadmap and release strategy for the v3.x series.

Our focus has changed with this release from implementing additional features into the core to concentrating on the framework and to add the features to future releases. This allows v3.0 to be released sooner with a stable framework, and allows a much faster release cycle for new features compared to the previous “release every 6 months” release strategy.

This release is a stable production-ready release and will be the first supported release in the v3.x series. This release is still marked as an Alpha release due to framework changes that are still planned. We therefore recommend the installation of this release to those that are performing it themselves, and for hosting and service providers to wait until the final release of v3.0 before making it available to their customers.

The community add-ons site will be accepting uploads for this release and discussion channels will be available on the community support forums.

The v2.2 -> v3.0 Alpha 5 migration tool will be made available by the end of March for existing installations to use, and is only recommended to those that will be updating their installations leading up to the final v3.0 release.

The roadmap for v3.0 is now:

v3.0 Alpha 5

• Product Attributes Implementation
• Dynamic Table Listings (Administration Tool)
• Live Search (Administration Tool)
• Administration Tool sections now self-contained Applications
• Error Logging; both PHP and MySQL errors and warnings now logged (forced runtime usage of PHP E_ALL and MySQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES)
• Stabilized Framework
• Usage of JSON for RPC calls
• Inclusion of jQuery v1.3.2 and jQuery UI v1.6rc6

v3.0 Beta 1

• HTML E-Mails
• Purchase Without Account
• Frozen Framework
• Updated Frontend/GUI
• Upgrade from v2.2 and v3.0 Alpha 5

v3.0

• Bugfixes
• Finalize Updated Frontend/GUI
• Documentation
• Certified Modules
• Upgrade from v2.2 and v3.0 Beta 1

v3.1

• Backup/Import/Export Features

v3.2

• Gift Vouchers and Coupons

The v3.0 Alpha 5 release will also be the first osCommerce Online Merchant release using Git to attract an even greater wave of developers to help with add-ons and core framework improvements. Git is a distributed version control system which allows developers to clone and create branches on their own local development machines. A discussion channel will be made available on the community support forums to manage the discussions on clones, patches, and keeping up to date with everyones changes.

The Git development repository is hosted at:

http://github.com/osCommerce/oscommerce/

Developers, feel free to fork the git master branch now and keep up to date with the commits leading up to the release. Be ready to show the world your creativity in making osCommerce Online Merchant an even better e-commerce solution

The new community add-ons site is now live which aims to replace the current contributions section on the support site by providing additional features to help developers maintain their add-on packages.

The new site will be rolled out in 3 stages with the first stage contemplating the existing contributions section. In addition, community members and developers can help clean the structure of add-on packages by reporting uploads to be removed.

The following changes are planned for the second and third stages of updating the new site:

2nd Stage Updates:

• register_globals compatibility flag for 2.2-RC1 and 2.2-Final installations
• Maintainers can assign their add-ons as public or private to allow or disallow additional uploads from other community members
• If an add-on is private, maintainers can assign other community members as maintainers who are allowed to upload files to the package

3rd Stage Updates:

• Allow maintainers to edit descriptions
• Allow maintainers to link their uploads to a forum topic (for support)
• Allow maintainers to upload screenshots of the add-on in action
• Allow maintainers to link to other add-ons as a “related” feature
• Allow community members to adopt an inactive add-on

The new community add-ons site can be reached at:

http://addons.oscommerce.com

We look forward to rolling out the additional features in the coming weeks and look forward to the additional suggestions the community has for improving the experience of finding, downloading, and contributing additional add-on packages.

Although the product attributes implementation has been replaced with the newer Product Variants feature, a new feature of the same title is being introduced to 3.0 Alpha 5 which deals with non-core related product data with a flexible and modular implementation.

This allows modules to be created to define new data parameters for a product which can easily be accessed via its module code.

Once a product attribute module has been installed via the Administration Tool (in the same manner payment and shipping modules are installed), its field is automatically added to the edit product page where the module controls the presentation of having its value defined.

This allows add-ons to be installed that add data fields to the product without the need to modify the edit product page in order to save the data in the database.

A minor change to the database class has also been performed to automatically bind the database table names in SQL queries which allows any database table to be accessed without the need to define it first in the includes/database_tables.php file. (This file will be removed in the 3.0 release)

Here is a short QuickTime movie showing the new Product Attributes feature with the following attribute modules:

1) Date Available (javascript controlled input field)
2) Manufacturer (pull down menu)
3) Shipping Availability (pull down menu)

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Attributes QuickTime Movie; 1.1MB

The product information page on the store front-end has also been updated to allow the dynamic product variant combination values to control certain data on the page, such as the product price and the product model.

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Info Page

The introduction of the new Product Attributes feature is currently defined for master products only, which product variants will use, and will be definable at the product variants level once the edit product page has been redesigned to handle the presentation of the data.

The new Product Variants feature has been extended to allow custom variant values which customers can define themselves. Common use of custom variant values is accepting text to apply to the product, for example, Apple providing engravements on their iPod multimedia devices, and clothing stores that print custom text on the front and back of t-shirts.

Here is a short QuickTime movie showing how product variants are created for a t-shirt product, and extended on by providing custom variant values:

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Variants QuickTime Movie; 3.7MB

The primary change to support custom variant values went into the shopping cart class where it referenced each product in the shopping cart via its product ID. This brought in a limitation where it was not possible for a customer to add a t-shirt with different custom text values to their shopping cart incase they wanted to order the same t-shirt multiple times with different texts.

To allow this behaviour, each product in the shopping cart is now referenced by an automatically generated, customer specific, item ID where it is possible to order multiple quantities of a product, and now possible to order a product multiple times with different custom variant values.

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Info Page

It is now possible to mark a product variant as the default product variant on the Administration Tool to have default values already selected on the product information page. This shows above with the “Size” pull down selection list and the “Colour” radio button choices.

As this product accepts custom values, each time it is added to the shopping cart it is treated as a separate product in the shopping cart contents. This allows the product to be added multiple times with the same variant combination values but with different custom text values.

osCommerce Online Merchant Shopping Cart Page

This behaviour only applies to products with custom variant values where adding a normal standard product to the shopping cart multiple times would increment its quantity value.

The parsing of the product variant combinations are performed by modules assigned to the variant group, which can easily extend the behaviour of product variants to suit ones needs. This modular implementation has also introduced our first PHP 5 optimized abstract class which forces modules to follow an operation standard.

To further extend the Product Variants feature, we will also be looking at making it possible for customers to upload files when adding products to their shopping cart. This builds on the custom text possibility for t-shirts where logos and images can be attached to an order. The next set of changes will finalize the implementation for the 3.0 Alpha 5 release and be committed to /trunk/, with the file upload extension being looked into for the 3.0 Alpha 6 release.

The Product Attributes implementation for the 3.0 Alpha 5 release is being replaced with a new cleaner and flexible solution called Product Variants. This extends the previous Product Attributes feature by creating separate product records for each variant and assigning them to one master product.

This allows the quantity, price, model, weight, status, and other product data information to be assigned distinctively to each variant a product has. As each variant has its own product record, referencing a product with a specific variant combination is easily performed with the product ID.

This is an extreme improvement over the previous implementation where specific attribute combinations were referenced with a string value containing the product ID and the various attribute group and attribute value IDs (eg, 14{2}14{5}256).

Here is a short QuickTime movie demonstrating how Product Variants are defined on the Administration Tool and how they are handled on the Online Store:

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Variants QuickTime Movie; 1.6MB

The Administration Tool product listing identifies products containing variants and graphically distinguishes the records to normal product records:

osCommerce Online Merchant Administration Tool Product Listing

The price range for the product variants (the minimum and maximum prices) are shown in the product listing as well as the number of total quantities the master product has.

Defining variants for a product can be performed by clicking on an “Add Variant” action button and by double clicking on the variant values to add:

osCommerce Online Merchant Administration Tool Product Variants

The product variant combinations are held within javascript values and are first saved (or deleted) when saving the product record.

The Online Store also distinguishes between normal products and products with variants by showing either the full product price for normal products, or the minimum price for products with variations:

osCommerce Online Merchant Product Variant Pricing

The Product Variants feature has been freshly committed to my subversion development branch and will be merged to trunk as soon as the implementation is finalized. The interaction with product variants on the product information page is being finalized and will be showcased later this week with another blogging entry.

If you’re keeping up to date with my development branch, please take a look at the changes and provide feedback on the community forums. Thanks!