Releases for e-Commerce

This is a very nice release with more improvements on the user experience and also fixing some bugs.

The biggest change in this release is that there is a new dependency on Chaos Tools which enables better handling of the checkout and cleans up the setup of a new type of checkout much better.

Also doing this now means that PayPal Express is working which is much nicer to use than the basic PayPal. Also using ctools means that we can easily add have modal popups which will be really great in ec_charges and also use the form wizard functionality.

The wizard form functionality was what finally sold me on using ctools as it will mean that I can build a fully user definable check out over multiple pages as the user wants it.

I don't know it it will be in the final version of 4.0 but will come before moving to Drupal 7. Also I hope that this will mean in some part it will be easier to move to Drupal 7.

This release is a major step towards the final release. Now recurring payments in working coupled with the ec_recurring module. You are now able to set up scheduled payments. Curring this only works with PayPal basic but I am going to be adding it to express and pro as soon as I can.

This will also be able to be rolled out to other payment gateways so when I can I will update ec_eway and ec_authorize.net.

This is not a big release, but it does address a couple of important issues. Such as being able to convert nodes into products which is working 100% better, and also some new allocation interfaces for allowing the system to provide more information to the credit card gateway.

Also I have fixed up the cc validation and usability around the form handling of credit cards.

Lastly there has been some work on allow external modules to make add additional fields to the address. See ec address extra http://drupal.org/project/ec_address_extra

There have been a lot of stability fixes and the code is getting tighter and tighter. I have also done a lot of work on Charges and getting them to work much better and also so they will now work with products.

Also I have been checking the API as I have been make changes for clients and making sure that I can do everything I need so there has been some changes to make the api much better. Things I have been able to do in the new ec_donate module has really made things better.

I have also gotten the AJAX cart all working, and it is going really well. This works on both the linkand form based add to cart. I did this with the new ahah.js that replaces the standard one and allows a lot more to be done during a standard ahah. So we may need to bash on this a bit more.

It is getting a lot closer to being a final release, a lot of the code is now just tidy ups and writting more tests.

This has been a long time coming, I do not doubt that there will be more work, but now it is main clean ups. I feel all the functionality is there and really more than anything just needs hammering on.

One of the things that I was concentrating on when doing any bug fixes was to start doing them as Test driven development so I would create a test and then from the test fix the issue. This means that when the new PIFR system comes I will turn on the testing for e-Commerce so that everytime a commit is done, all the tests will be run and everytime a new patch is uploaded it will be applyed and tested so when we get to a new patch we know that it applies, and that it passes all the tests.

There is only a few tests ATM but as time goes by more will be developed, and I am getting faster at developing them so I will add them as I find tests to add, and as I fix issues. If you have any ideas for tests please create an issue and someone will get to them. I would prefer to have too many ideas for tests than not enough.

With all the new and much better things in the Drupal community has to offer I always things how much better it is being within the Drupal community. It is much easier to leverage what we have here than have to set up and maintain my own systems outside the Drupal community.

One of the main areas that I have been working on is to move all the theme_*() out into template files. I have completed the ec_cart module and I am working on others. Anyone wants to help please jump in.

Also the decision to have views do all the reporting is the greatest thing ever. I added a few lines of code and now ec also leverages the drupal search system to allow full text based searches of invoices and receipts. Then added some minor amounts of code for views and we now have a text based search. There were some sticking points with this as having a whole heap of exposed filters at the top of a report is very ugly. Now with some creative form and themes I have them all hidden away in a collapsible fieldset.

I am thinking that this is going to be the last version. There have been a lot bug fixes and also I have done a lot of work on the views integration and also the workflow has now been changed to use rules to allow the store owner to change the workflow to fit to how they work, and not have to change their processes to fit with e-Commerce.

Changes since DRUPAL-6--4-0-BETA5:

This is just a bug fix release which corrects some more core errors. Please test and let me know of any errors.

There have been a lot of bug fixes as well as the a complete rewrite of the checkout. The checkout ATM is only a single page and options like changing address and payment type have not been put back in. These are going to use the #ahah feature of the new formapi to allow users to change much easier. I am going to put back multi page checkouts, but this will be done by configuration and not be forced on the site admin.

The checkout api has completely changed and is now much more modular and should allow for much better formed functions.

Also there were problems with receipting now allowing the processing of receipts which have been fixed and now a complete checkout can be done.