Rules integration

What I'm curious to see is if we can write code that instead of redefining everything simply passes on the parameters straight to the CA equivalent functions. In other words, we'd have function wrappers for the conditions that could translate between Rules and CA data structures. I was under the impression that we were pretty similar, so duplicating the code seems avoidable.

adding rules integration tag

I was under the impression that we were pretty similar, so duplicating the code seems avoidable.

Would that not be a good reason for running with this patch as is, as a replacement of CA with Rules integration? Why have two similar modules, one maintained solely for UC purposes when you could take advantage of a solid community supported/tested/integrated module? It is in the same realm as UC adding CCK and Views dependencies, both of which look to have solid support at http://www.ubercart.org/forum/development/11216/adding_dependencies_uc_3x

I'm familiar with how it was arrived at that CA exists, and I don't want to rehash all of http://www.ubercart.org/forum/development/5555/rules_vs_conditional_actions but it seems like the major stumbling block with replacing CA with Rules integration was that nobody had written it. Now that someone is willing to write it, would it be reasonable to expect that this could happen...perhaps in tandem with CA in the 2 branch and as a replacement in UC 3.x?

+1. Subscribing.

oh, haven't seen this issue yet. I also think the direction explained in #1 makes sense. I did a similar thing for supporting core-actions in rules - get the metadata available and transform it automatically. Custom per condition/action fixes for rules can be applied by using hook_rules_action_info_alter() easily.

Though of course I don't know whether there are some troubles. Anyway if any further questions regarding this come up, of course feel free to contact me.

Subscribing

I'm not sure what the confusion's about...by integrating with Rules, Ubercart will have many more available actions and better support for these triggers/actions. What discernible benefits do Conditional Actions have? Clearly the Rules maintainer is more than happy to help with integration.

For anyone who needs this quickly...here's the horribly hackish solution I settled on. If I have the time though I'll try and distill it into something more reusable. First create a small custom module with the event(s) you want available in Rules. I called my module 'uc_rules':

function uc_rules_rules_event_info() {
    return array(
        'product_purchased' => array(
            'label' => t('A user buys a product'),
            'module' => 'Ubercart',
            'arguments' => array(
                'customer' => array( 
                    'label' => 'Customer',
                    'type' => 'user'
                )
            )
        )
    );
}

I based that on what I read at http://drupal.org/node/298549 , and on the contents of the rules API file included with the module.

Then have your predicate execute a PHP code action invoking the rule, like this:

rules_invoke_event('product_purchased', $account);

I hope this helps others on tight deadlines.

subscribing

Major ++ to this issue.

I would love to have a couple predicates, like "customer purchases a product," and a few actions available.

I'm going to have to simply write one (like the one mentioned in #10) for now, but hope that Ubercart will move towards using Rules for everything in the future... much easier to have everything in a workflow in one place, and CA has some limitations that cause me to not be able to use it all the time.

+1 here! I Would LOVE to see rules integration, Ubercart's CA hurts my brain.

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As I understand Ryan's concern was having an external dependency, but clearly though Rules has become the de facto standard, and extremely user friendly these months. I am with #5 and all for integration.
+1 :)

What is important that this also gives more time and space for the Ubercart boyz for core UC focus :)

Hey everyone,

I don't think we have to abandon Ubercart's Conditional Actions to have Rules integration. I think there's a lot to be said for Rules support in addition to Conditional Actions. I also think we have a much better chance of getting this committed to Ubercart if we don't remove a module that already exists (and that many people may rely upon).

So I'd rather just see some support to create an Ubercart successful checkout as a Rules event and then support for individual product items as Rules conditions.

Because so many modules integrate with Rules already, this would open up the possibility of setting a flag on successful checkout (Flag module), recording an activity on successful checkout (Activity module), sending a private message on checkout (Private Message module) and awarding Userpoints on checkout (Userpoints module)--all of this could be achieved without needing special Ubercart contributed modules for each purpose.

Better yet, because the ACL module (http://drupal.org/project/acl) has full Rules support, this would enable us to finally be able to grant an individual user access to a specific node upon Ubercart checkout (without having to set up a separate role to grant access to each node).

So I'd love to see us collectively work together to add Rules support, rather than get distracted by trying to remove Conditional Actions. I think a little bit of redundancy would be fine, don't you think?

Cheers,
Ben

Anyone know how to make #10 here work for a particular product? I would like to detect which product was purchased.

IF Product A is purchased then redirect to some url, or other similar rules.

Subscribing.

Is the patch in #4 functional?

Will this two year issue ever implemented in the near future? I feel, that the rules module has become a de facto standard on almost all drupal websites and it would be great to do some actions for example on the check out based on rules actions.

Maybe you should address this request at http://www.ubercart.org

Is this the correct blog post url above?

subscribing. Is ubercart rule integration still in plan ?

Yes, Rules integration is on the plan for Drupal 7. In fact, it's one of the first thing I plan on changing after the general port.

How about D6...we're still stuck on D6 and i guess we will still be for some time now. It would be nice to have Amitai working on that patch of his again :)

Exact. We need this feature in Drupal 6.

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pushing this up...is anyother way i can help this to see the light ? :)

I'm still very interested to see this happen for D6. Just started working with rules in depth and it's amazing!

UC/Rules integration could certainly ease some of the pressure we put on the Ubercart developers in between releases. Our very use of Rules would likely lead to new ideas for Ubercart development too. I personally would like to use Rules to bolster the Checkout process which for me is the weakest link in the otherwise awesome chain that is Ubercart.

So i guess my point is that a little work on Rules integration could make life a whole lot easier for both Ubercart's users and developers.

++1 subscribing

for put the code, It's created the file nameModule.ca.inc for include code, after require this file in the file called nameModule.module and ready.

Greetings.

subscribing.

huh ?

Again I want to make the case for Ubercart 6.x/Rules integration, this time with a few examples of how and why this could possibly benefit both developers AND users at the same time. I'm not questioning these most excellent Ubercart developers, I'm just recording my thoughts in public in hopes that more attention will be paid to development of this feature in Ubercart 6.x considering a stable 6.x version is less than 5 months old.

STOCK MANAGMENT: While we wait for better stock management add-on modules to be developed, we could implement our own custom stock handling rules.

Examples:
• Unpublish product nodes that are out of stock (could be applied to specific product types)
• Use Rules Forms to hide the "Add to Cart" button when viewing products with 0 stock left
• Create temporary fixes for critical bugs in the stock system...Rules could replenish stock after an order has been deleted: See issue here (this critical issue has been up for 7 months with no resolution yet...Rules could be used here to temporarily bail out a production site while a fix is developed)

CHECKOUT PROCESS: Conditional Actions could handle special features the Ubercart developers want to implement for "out of the box" functionality, but Rules could open up a world of possibilities for UC to interact with Nodes and Users without having to hack UC.

Examples:
• Set advanced permissions including interacting with the ACL module as BenK stated in #19: Also see issues here and here
• Manage advanced user roles settings including role expiration dates using Rules Scheduler. Issue here.

It might be of interest to see what I had to do to get some automation for ubercart (adding an option to an attribute and enabling it on a product node, on the condition/trigger of a new OG group (aka a node of a certain content type) being created. I think this would have been a lot easier with rules and an api for dealing with options.

http://drupal.org/node/743678#comment-2725892

I ended up using rules, and also using drupal_execute and editing the tables directly with db_query. It would have been so cool to have some uc actions like "add an option" or "enable an option".

@nodecode: I'm perfectly willing to put Rules integration into the D6 branch if it gets written and tested, as long as it doesn't break the existing use of Conditional Actions in both Ubercart and contributed modules for Ubercart. This will help ease the transition to D7, where CA is officially out and Rules are in.

Since it's currently being developed for the D7 branch it might be a better use of someone's time to get it working there, then backport it to D6.

@everyone else: Finding someone willing to do the work for D6 is going to be the main issue. Plus, it will need to be tested extensively - I don't see that anyone's even tried out or commented on Amitaibu's patch in #4. It's not going to fix itself just because you ask for it ... Community participation is essential if you want this to happen.

Agree, there is nothing really stopping someone writing a uc_rules module now outside of ubercart. Just like there is a uc_views module that add additional views support.

I personally think module developed in contrib space should be encourage and then once stable and if relevant to most users of ubercart it can be considered for part of the core ubercart package.

I fully support rules integration. Its a must. Subscribing.

>So, since the integration we are talking about is only firing actions/ condition one can use CA's Execute PHP action/ condition and call a rules set (see my comment in #24).

Why not make an action for that? Just like there is a rules action to execute a rule set.

must integrate, whe talking about, node checkout, granting roles in other ways. when saving a taxonomy term add a product to a cart, so people can create a node, selecting a picture they want to print in example. and in the same save they can add the product to cart in a really easy wAy.

Hi,

can anyone please tell me if such a thing as "uc rules" does exist? - I am looking for a way to create one day a week discounts for my clients store.

These discounts only take place on tuesdays so I am looking for an integration with ubercart tht will help me accomplish that.

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A lot of people are sitting here wanting it, but no one's willing to go the next step or at least provide a bounty - good on ya team.

I'm more than happy to put funds toward such a module build. If others are wanting the module, pitch in too. We can't expect guys to build this stuff for free when we are the ones wanting it.

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This would be pretty useful. Are there any partial solutions even? I know there's a patch from a long time ago but since then the author has said, "What stopped me from completing this task (apart of no time, or someone to pay for it) was that Ubercart is to tied to CA."

Otherwise, perhaps it would be useful to get some sort of donation process going? I'm not sure how this typically works but if someone could name a price and we could set up small donation "pot" (something like Kickstarter?) I assume it wouldn't take long to meet the goal and get this moving forward.

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Would be very interesting if one could use flags to checkout a product e.g. if someone has already bought an advertisement one could use a flag e.g. "make it bold" to make the add bold afterwards. One just clicks the flag and a product is added .... similar to node_checkout

subscribing

how complicated is a rules integration actually?

I have no glue, but what about a more broad question. Is it possible to transfer CA to Rules?

@baff: What kind of question is that? Of course it's possible. It's just a matter of amount of effort needed for such a thing. People usually just sit and wait - with that kind of effort - not many things are possible.

does somebody can estimate the rough amount of work to do this?
maybe some of us non-programmers can do a bounty ...

@madjoe: How should I know? It is NOT always possible to transform one approach to another one!

@Amitaibu - maybe #24 as a module solution + paid? would people here spend some money?

+1.

yes i would spend some money ...

+1

I am working on something for use in a larger project, need this functionality so I am writing it. I will post something when I have it working. Im just targeting firing Rule Sets from a conditional action.

I am along the same line with #70: I am doing a larger project which needs actions executed per Ubercart checkout. I will also go along firing Rules/ Rule Sets from a CA and keep you updated.

On the discussion here: Rules is the defacto-standard in Drupal, so exporting some actions (as triggers for Rules) with associated data from Ubercart would be a great benefit. However, either we need to provide a custom patch or ask Ubercart to provide it. However, Ubercart does not depend on it for their success and it is not a decision of us (Drupal community) whether they drop CA.

+1 for this - subscribing

+1

Any updates on making this work mschaal or mschaal?

isn't this integrated in UC 3.x ?? I think it is

@arski: Yes it is, but that's Drupal 7.x. This issue is for 6.x. There are many who'd like to have Rules integration with the currently-in-use D6 version of Ubercart, especially seeing as how Ubercart for D7 is not yet out of dev. For that reason, lots of people can't upgrade to Drupal 7 for a while.

That being said, I'm not sure what kind of work is going on to backport the Rules integration with UC 6.x-2.x. That would help a lot of people, but I'm not a core UC dev so I couldn't say.

Subscribe.

+1.

Rule is fundamental for a feedback module to work (http://drupal.org/node/847422). I would like to see rules integrated with UberCart/UC Marketplace to control the the conditions on which a user can leave and receive feedback. Additionally, it could be useful for UC Marketplace stores (http://drupal.org/node/827558).

+1

What a ridiculous thread this has become. I first subscribed more than 2 years ago with high hopes and a strong desire to help in whatever way i could. its disappointing that no one with intimate knowledge of the UC system is willing to work on this feature for the 6.x-2.x branch. I'm sure there are enough subscribers here to make it more than worth someone's time if money is the issue. I gave up on UC long ago because of lack of Rules integration.

Kudos to the developers for putting this feature in 3.x. Perhaps in another year all the D7 modules that were "pleged" to have a "full drupal 7 release on the day that drupal 7 is released" will finally be ready for the real world and it will be possible for us to start testing UC 3.x in droves then.

I know that the Ubercart developers don't "owe" the users anything, but ignoring this topic, possibly the most subscribed to issue in the queue, and leaving 6.x users to hack it is just upsetting. Even fago, the Rules developer has chimed in twice to offer suggestions that have been basically brushed aside. The community is being left behind here to the detriment of Ubercart I am sure.

I'm marking this as "postponed". Like it or not, its a FACT. Someone can mark "active" again if there are plans to do something about this.

#81

thanks for this statement ...

I'm with #81 - btw, if you left UC, what did you move to? Just curious.

I'm curious to know to as E-commerce is largely abandoned and Drupal Commerce is infantile at best.

#81 - Thanks for verbalising the concerns that many people share.

How do we move forward? Is it possible to backport the Rules integration, found in UC 3.0, perhaps to a separate module, perhaps into the 2.4 branch?

Are the people familiar with the system available to help, do they have access, etc?

#85: Yes. Read the comments from fago, especially #46, and #42 from TR. It's definitely possible, but the best idea is to put Rules in 3.x and stabilize it and then backport it to 2.x. You could just do a whole new module and call it uc_rules but that would be duplicating work and effort.

What nodecode should've done, instead of continually complaining, would be to look at the 3.x code and work on a backport. He did a good job of "stating reasons why Rules integration is good" but we already knew all of that. What we need is the code to actually get written and tested, as has been mentioned here numerous times. Talk is cheap, someone needs to work on the backport from 3.x and post it here (or in a uc_rules project page) to get any traction.

I'm willing to look at it myself, the only reason I haven't is because I have no need for Rules at this time. I'm definitely looking into setting up integration in the near future, however, and if the time comes when I need it and no one has gotten to it yet I will try to make progress on it. But as it seems there are people who have already dug in, it seems to make sense that code could already exist and should be shared. At the very least, we should start taking a look at where Rules integration is in 3.x, and attempt to backport that into a standalone module for Ubercart in D6. (The main issue I think is that the API will be different between the major Drupal versions).

I don't agree with nodecode setting the status to "postponed" as he's not a maintainer, either. He should've left that up to someone involved in the project.

EDIT: Looking through this thread again and the mention of ACL for granting single-user node access, this might be an issue for me sooner rather than later. If someone is willing to help me with heavy lifting (Amitaibu? Longwave?) I can start a project page at drupal.org/project/uc_rules and I can setup a few of you as CVS maintainers. That way we can start to form some sort of basic framework to at least get this started and we can work on either a backport or start from scratch based on Amitaibu's code. Thoughts?

I've been using Rules with Ubercart for awhile now via the Flag module (which already has rules integration). I use this to grant a user access to a node via ACL.

It's really quite simple: All I do is create a Ubercart Conditional Action that uses about 4 lines of php code to flag a particular node on behalf of the user who ordered a product. Then I create a rule that says when a node is flagged, fire a Rules action that adds that user to the ACL for the node.

Flag has a very simple and easy to use API so this works for me instead of having to integrate Rules directly with Ubercart.

Cheers,
Ben

@nodecode: This is a community-developed project and YOU are the community. You say this issue is very important to you but you haven't even taken the time to evaluate the original proposed patch. That says to me that you're not willing to spend any of your own time and/or money to get this solved - you're just demanding that others do it for you.

A number of work-arounds are available (such as the new one in #87), and there appears to be little motivation for creating a built-in solution for D6.

So we're back to the situation that I outlined in #42 (24 March 2010), which I'll state again for the scrolling-impaired:

@nodecode: I'm perfectly willing to put Rules integration into the D6 branch if it gets written and tested, as long as it doesn't break the existing use of Conditional Actions in both Ubercart and contributed modules for Ubercart. This will help ease the transition to D7, where CA is officially out and Rules are in.

Since it's currently being developed for the D7 branch it might be a better use of someone's time to get it working there, then backport it to D6.

@everyone else: Finding someone willing to do the work for D6 is going to be the main issue. Plus, it will need to be tested extensively - I don't see that anyone's even tried out or commented on Amitaibu's patch in #4. It's not going to fix itself just because you ask for it ... Community participation is essential if you want this to happen.

@interesingaftermath @Stomper: unfortunately, i just stopped trying to make an e-commerce site with Drupal. My first attempt at Drupal/UC-based e-commerce was a personal website. I had only been in the Drupal community for a few months with practically zero PHP coding skills when I came up against this issue. Back then it proved too much for me to take it any further with my limited knowledge of Drupal.

@BenK: Brilliant workaround! I saw you laying out the initial concept earlier but didn't quite grasp what you meant. I'll definitely try this in the future if I ever get around to using UC again. Sounds like a viable option :) Thank you!

@torgosPizza: I don't have the skills to attempt a backport of 7.x-3.x and, like you, I'm not using UC anyway. I changed the status of the issue to provoke dialog. Whether its politically correct or not, the system allows anyone to do this.

@TR: Don't get it twisted my friend. I demand nothing. I don't even use UC. You've done fantastic work on a great module. Without folks like you, we wouldn't have UberCart in the first place. That said, I felt this particular issue deserved a solution for the many users who cannot patch modules. I may have ruffled some feathers but if that prompted BenK to report on the success of his workaround, it was worth it.

IMHO BenK has presented the best solution yet for those with limited coding skills. I imagine that examples of PHP snippets for setting a flag can be found all over Drupal.org.

For those who are interested in my Flag module workaround option, here is the PHP code that I use to grant a user who purchased a product access to a node. To implement, I created a "Excecute custom PHP code" action on the "Order status gets updated" event. Then I add conditions to check the order status (the updated order must be "Completed") and check the order for a particular product. Here's the PHP code that I use in the action:

$nid = 10;
$user = user_load (array('uid' => $updated_order->uid));
$flag = flag_get_flag('purchased');
$flag->flag('flag', $nid, $user);

The example above is for granting access to node #10. Also, I'm using a flag called "purchased" that I first created with the flag module. This needs to be a per-user flag rather than a global flag. So replace the node ID with whatever you want and you can replace "purchased" with a different flag name as long as it matches.

One strange thing I noticed: The flag module seems to need the Flag link to be displayed to make this work. This could be a bug fixed by a later version of the Flag module (mine is a little old). Basically, for this to work for me I needed to check "Display link on node page" or one of the other display options. Not a big deal since you can always hide this with CSS (and the user doesn't see it until they have access to the node anyway).

The above code will set the flag and then you just need to set up an active rule with Rules module that does the following: On the "Node has been flagged, under Purchased" event (or whatever the name of your flag is), add a "Grant access for flagging user" action. Set the content argument to be "flagged content" and the user argument to be "flagging user". Check the "view" operation as the access you want to grant.

And once you do all of this, it will just work. As an added bonus, you can always flag the node manually if you need to grant access when doing customer service.

Hope this helps,
Ben

+1 for Rules integration backport to Drupal 6. I know we need to be forward-looking, but eCommerce is so important that I suspect most of the 30,000+ downloads for V6 are live and generating income, and I suspect hardly any of the 647 downloads for V7 are live. Moreover, I suspect very few of the V6 sites will be upgraded to V7 because it is too costly (development, testing), hugely risky, and there is too much at stake, with no obvious financial benefits. Therefore, from an eCommerse/Ubercart perspective, it is most likely that only new websites will brave V7 - leaving the massive V6 serious userbase behind...

Also, by not back-porting Rules integration, it actually makes the upgrade to V7 for the V6 user base less likely. Most developers and their clients will want to take the least risky upgrade path. If we can start using Rules in V6 then we will have less to worry about if, and when, we upgrade. However, if we have to migrate from Conditional Actions...

A huge thank you for all the contributers thus far.

I would like to see this in 6.x, but don't have time to write the entire integration myself. Patches are welcome, and backporting where possible is a good idea, as that will make future 6->7 upgrades easier.

+1!

Subscribing.

Spotted http://drupal.org/sandbox/hunziker/1089042 in the sandbox modules feed, hopefully one to watch!

Nice catch! I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Nice to see that my module has already posted here. I committed a test ready version. It support the following features:

• Order status changes can be catch with Rules.
• Access to order object.
• Access to order products in the order
• Order customer user can be loaded.
• Order object can be used for replacements (tokens).

Feedback is very welcome.

Thanks for your work, hunziker. This is definitely a much needed module.

Great work hunziker!

Subscribing, can't wait to see this moving further along.

The latest version implements all events and actions of Ubercart 3. In addition all useful Conditional Actions (triggers & actions) are ported to the new module.
I thinks its ready for beta testing.

Suh-weet! Nice work!

http://drupal.org/sandbox/hunziker/1089042 - #95 link not working

I think it is now http://drupal.org/project/uc_rules

In light of #100 and #102, it seems like we can close down this thread. Further discussions/issues should take place in the issue queue for http://drupal.org/project/uc_rules

@hunziker: Thanks for stepping up and doing all the work needed to make this a reality!

Untagging.

Here's a patch to turn the order status into a multi-select field.

This is required because there are some orders that might have been paid for and requires that the order status should be automatically set to payment_received.

Another use case is to allow the rule to be applicable to more than one order status per rule evaluation. For example, there are two users making an order at the same time. User A's total order amount is $10 while user B's order is $0. I will want user B's order status to be automatically set to payment received on completion of the checkout process while user's A order status to be set to pending or completed.

With these cases, a single select field wouldn't be appropriate.

I hope someone finds this useful.

@drecute: Please open up a brand-new issue for your patch in the UC Rules issue queue. Please don't hijack existing, closed issues. Also, "patch (to be ported)" would not be the correct status - use "needs review" when you are providing a patch.

Resetting status information.

i have same task. how we can enable uc_attribute on node in rules ?