By mjlacore on

I have a very simple site, using Drupal 5.1 with the latest E-Commerce modules installed. It exists to sell one shippable product, currently at a flat shipping rate throughout the continental US, with PayPal as the sole payment method (though I haven't even gotten far enough to test that yet). I simply cannot get the e-commerce system to work properly for this site, having worked on it for many hours over the course of many days. There are three primary issues that I have encountered so far that I can identify and describe.

For testing purposes, I have one "TEST PRODUCT" created as a shippable product at a cost of $0.05. Product creation works just fine, and I am able to add the product to my shopping cart without a problem and, upon checkout, the transaction appears in the transaction list, with payment naturally marked pending since I do not yet have a payment module installed. The Flexicharge module is set up, with a single site-wide charge of $9.95 created and defined for a region called "Continental US."

The first issue involves the gathering of billing and shipping address information. The site is configured for Anonymous purchase, with the address module installed. The checkout screen order is set to the default order of "ec_anon", then "address", "flexicharge", "payment", and finally "cart". If I access the site as an anonymous user, add the Test Product to my shopping cart, and then proceed to checkout, I am asked for an e-mail address first, as expected, then asked for billing and shipping addresses. So far, so good. But when I click "Continue" on the address form, I am taken to the identical, blank address form once again. If I click continue there, even without re-entering information, I go straight to the shopping cart review form, where my address information is correct along with my basic order information. Both the flexicharge screen and the payment screen noted in the screen order above are skipped. Seeing the address screen twice is obviously not conducive to ease of use for end users.

The payment screen being skipped makes sense so far, since I have not added a payment method while still testing and learning basic functionality. But skipping the flexicharge screen is the second of my two major issues: I am unable to get the system to add the site-wide, basic charge for shipping into the transaction. I have been working on this for days, tweaking and changing and installing and re-installing the flexicharge and region modules, and have yet to see any sign of that charge being added anywhere. This is, at this point, the single biggest glitch that if not resolved very soon (my client is anxious to start selling this item) I will have to abandon Drupal e-commerce and work something else out.

Finally - and this may not be an issue but merely the result of not having gotten far enough along in the process - when I do manage to process the shopping cart with only the basic shippable product, no e-mail is sent to the purchaser stating that the transaction has been received, despite the transaction being added to the table, as I would expect. I understand that this may simply be based on the lack so far of a payment method being made available, but if this is also a glitch in the system, I would like to know now and attempt to resolve it prior to going on to configuring payment.

I hope I've made myself relatively clear on the issues: duplicated address screen, lack of flexicharge added to transaction, and no purchaser e-mail sent. I'd greatly appreciate some assistance.

Mark

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

derekwebb1’s picture

derekwebb1 commented

Hello, personally I think you might try enabling a payment gateway and see if that fixes your problems. If your system is expecting a payment gateway to be in place and there isn't one, then the result is hard to predict.

I recommend trying it out with PayPal since it is easy to set up.

Hope this helps...

Best regards, Derek Webb
http://makefunds.com
eCommerce made easy!

Sree’s picture

Sree commented

hey I was also facing some issues with shipping methods screens from past couple of days .....
check whether ur shipping tables are getting installed or not ....
shipping tables are not getting installed even when we enable them from modules ....
make sure about DB first before proceeding

-- Sree --
IRC Nick: sreeveturi

mjlacore’s picture

mjlacore commented

I appreciate the tips, and have followed through on them. Paypal module is installed and works as expected. All the shipping tables have been created. Still, no shipping charge is given: it is always listed, but is set to $0.00 every time.

I have Flexicharge installed, as well as Regions, have three different regions setup (Continental US, Alaska & Hawaii, and Canada), all currently set for the exact same shipping rate until further decisions are made. States are assigned to the appropriate regions. The base charge for shipping is set to $9.95 and the charge by weight is set to .01 for testing purposes, though I will need it set to 0. All three regions are enabled for this shipping charge.

There is one shippable product created with a price of $0.05, again for testing, with an actual weight of 4.2 pounds. The Flexicharge defaults for this Simple Shipping charge are set to include Shippable Products for all roles.

I have "Registered Users" only set (was using Anonymous Only) both for the store default and for the product and, based on recommendations I read elsewhere, have installed the Login Toboggan module so that an anonymous user is taken to a registration screen when purchasing the product. As a basic user (role: customer), I can place the product in my shopping cart, enter all the required address information, and click "Check Out". But still, every time, the shipping charge shows up as $0.00. If I then click the button to actually pay, I am taken to the proper Paypal page to pay for a product that costs $0.05.

I am working on the site in Firefox as the site administrator (user 1), and testing in Explorer as an anonymous or new user.

Anyone else with a lead that can help me out with this? It's starting to get on my nerves.

Thanks!

johnhanley’s picture

johnhanley commented

mjlacore,

I'm having the same problem. That is, I need one flat shipping rate for all of North America. I created a region, which includes the United States and Canada. I create a simple shipping definition, but the checkout page refuses to display and include the amount.

As a temporary workaround around I created a site-wide amount called "Flat Rate Shipping."

I would also like to include the amount in the "shipping" total instead of a separate item, but at this point that's the least of my worries.

I hate to disparage the effort (because it's quite good overall), but either Flexicharge wasn't tested very well or the interface needs to be more intuitive and documentation needs to be more detailed. Very frustrating.

jerry’s picture

jerry commented

I have a new site that had been working fine for a week or so, but today started exhibiting the repeated billing/shipping address behavior that you described. Most annoying. I'm just looking into it now.

If anyone else has seen (and solved) this, please speak up.

jerry’s picture

jerry commented

This was the culprit for me: http://drupal.org/node/129326

karlis’s picture

karlis commented

Hey, I am having the same problems with these modules.

First, in the flexicharge module, there seems to be a code problem in providers/sitewide.inc. After line 126 there's a case/break block on the operator that works fine if it's a percentage charge but the +/- rate always ends up zero. I replaced the case block with a if/elseif block and it seems to work, like this:

  if ($misc->operator == FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE) {
     $rate = $misc->rate;
  } else if ($misc->operator == FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE_PCT_SUBTOTAL) {
      $rate = ($total * $pct * $factor);
  } else if ($misc->operator == FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE_PCT_ITEMTOTAL) {
      $value = 0;
      foreach ((array)$txn->items as $item) {
        if (product_has_quantity($item)) {   
          $value += ($item->price * $item->qty);
        }
        else {
          $value += $item->price;
        }
      }  
      $rate = ($value * $pct * $factor);
  }

There may also be a problem with the "hide charge if zero", because even with that set it didn't hide zero charges.

Now, I'm currently noticing that with ec_anon installed, anonymous users don't have the option of selecting their payment method, whereas registered users do. I don't know what to do about this yet.

jimmypreserve’s picture

jimmypreserve commented

Hi Karlis,
may you give more info about yor script?
Thanx a lot
jimmy

coolvid’s picture

coolvid commented

I've taken a look at it myself, and the reason why there's a problem is that there are no "breaks" in the case statements. karlis' fix works (thanks for working that out), but you can use the following equally well (and retain the use of select) if you'd prefer:

<?php
  switch ($misc->operator) {
    case FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE:
      $rate = $misc->rate;
      break;
    case FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE_PCT_SUBTOTAL:
      $rate = ($total * $pct * $factor);
      break;
    case FLEXICHARGE_CHARGE_PCT_ITEMTOTAL:
      $value = 0;
      foreach ((array)$txn->items as $item) {
        if (product_has_quantity($item)) {
          $value += ($item->price * $item->qty);
        }
        else {
          $value += $item->price;
        }
      }
      $rate = ($value * $pct * $factor);
      break;
   }
?>
modctek’s picture

modctek commented

Has anyone submitted this as a patch? I don't know the first thing about writing patch scripts, or I'd do it myself.

Phillip Mc’s picture

Phillip Mc commented

thanks for posting this. can u indicate where this goes in the flexicharge.module?

drew reece’s picture

drew reece commented

… http://drupal.org/node/228989#comment-817848

It sounds like a similar issue, but I don't have time to go over it at the moment. I'm using the patch in post 11, but have since added other features to flexicharge that makes patching difficult at present.

I believe post 16 also fixes the same basic problem for the user roles.

Drew

znerol’s picture

znerol commented

http://drupal.org/node/242915#comment-844191

weedoo’s picture

weedoo commented

Thank you... I don't know what else to say, you saved my ass.