mis apuntes oscommerce

Together with the osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 release, we have migrated the development repository from a centralized Subversion server to decentralized Git repositories. This replaces the need to access a central server, and requiring the permissions to do so, to allowing you to instantly clone or fork the official development repository to your local development machine. This gives you the complete history of the repository on your local machine where you can start committing your changes to and to share them with others.

The official Git development repository is hosted on Github where developers can network with each other and share the changes they have made.

A screencast presentation is available to show you how easy it is to fork the official repository to make your changes to, and how these changes can be merged back to the official repository.

This is our first screencast presentation and look forward to your feedback. Have fun!

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 introduces a strict level of error reporting directly in the core framework. This is performed by setting the PHP error reporting setting to E_ALL and by setting the MySQL sql_mode to STRICT_ALL_TABLES at runtime.

All warnings and errors are logged in a text file located in the “work” directory and can be easily viewed in the Administration Tool -> Tools -> Error Log application and summary module.

This is the only Administration Tool application where it’s a good sign when it doesn’t show anything. It gives a nice feeling knowing that any sort of warning or error in the core framework has been checked for, from uninitialized PHP variables to problems with MySQL queries.

Setting the error reporting at such strict levels ensures a high quality of coding standards is kept in the core framework and passes this along to add-ons that are developed and installed.

This makes it easier for developers working on addons where they can see where warnings and errors are occuring in what they have been working on, and motivates them to fix the problems to improve the quality of the finalized work.

A configuration parameter will be introduced in v3.0 Beta 1 to disable the output of PHP warnings and errors on the catalog frontend. This allows the output of warnings and errors to occur under development environments, and to be disabled on production servers.

According to the New York Times

Twitter is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet

with 25 million users already. Some osCommerce team members are also actively using Twitter to update others on what they’re currently doing and working on. Although it’s not always of general interest what others might be eating or drinking, I personally find it very inspiring to see what Harald is working on and to know it before everyone else does.

On our new Social Network Section you can see what the osCommerce team members are currently up to and you are welcome to follow them on Twitter. If you prefer to not drown yourself in too much information or think that your privacy is more important than following the social web trends and rather get the occasional news message, you can just subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed

The osCommerce team page has also been updated with links to the members’ Twitter profiles.

There are yet two other platforms where you can connect with the osCommerce project which you might not have been aware of:

• osCommerce Group on XING
• osCommerce Group on Facebook

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 has taken a big step forward in utilizing newer PHP and MySQL features. The minimum requirements to run v3.0 Alpha 5 are PHP v5.2.0+ and MySQL v4.1.13+ or v5.0.7+. A further requirement is the mysqli extension in PHP as the normal mysql database class was removed from v3.0 Alpha 5.

Both PHP and MySQL highly recommend the use of the newer mysqli extension over the older mysql extension.

It’s been reported that there are still service providers using MySQL v5.0.67. This is actually fine as it is a much newer version than the minimum requirement of v5.0.7.

To clarify the MySQL versioning scheme, the third number in the version string (”7″) is incremented for each new release in the release level.

MySQL v5.0.7 was actually a beta released on the 15th June 2005, and v5.0.67 was released on the 8th August 2008.

There have also been some reports that some service providers are still using PHP v5.1.6. RedHat Enterprise Linux and CentOS are vendors still using PHP v5.1.6. This is unfortunate as it does not meet the minimum PHP v5.2.0 requirement to install and use osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5.

PHP v5.2.0 was released on the 2nd November 2006.

The first reports of v3.0 Alpha 5 not running properly was due to the use of PHP v5.1.6 which does not contain the json_encode() function introduced in PHP v5.2.0. This function is used heavily in the Administration Tool with the new dynamic table listing and live search features.

A compatibility function exists that might be the saviour to the json_encode() problem for earlier PHP v5.X versions. If you are interested in testing this out, feel free to fork osCommerce on Github and report back of your findings.

We are proud to announce the fifth and final alpha release of osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 codenamed “Vanillekipferl”. The focus with this release has changed from implementing additional core features to, instead, concentrate on the core framework and to add new features to future releases. This allows v3.0 to be finalized and released much sooner with a stable framework and allows for a much faster release cycle to introduce new features.

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 is now accepting uploads for this release and discussion channels are open in the community support forums.

The osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 to v3.0 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.

New Features

Some of the new features in osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 include:

• New object-oriented framework (alpha 1)
• New installation routine (alpha 1)
• register_globals and magic_quotes_gpc compatibility (alpha 1)
• New template structure implementation (alpha 1)
• Search-engine optimizations (alpha 1)
• Service modules (alpha 1)
• Checkout procedure cleanup (alpha 2)
• New language definitions implementation (alpha 2)
• Updated payment modules with post-transaction actions (alpha 3)
• Catalog front-end, administration tool, and installation routine combined (alpha 3)
• XHTML/CSS based default template layout for the catalog side (alpha 3)
• Multiple product images implementation (alpha 3)
• New action modules (alpha 3)
• Administration Tool access levels (alpha 4)
• Administrator Log (alpha 4)
• Administration Tool batch action capabilities (alpha 4)
• HTML Editor for product descriptions (alpha 4)
• Full zone entries for most countries (alpha 4; Anders Pamdal)
• Language injection feature for similar languages (alpha 4)
• GeoIP Modules for the Administration Tool Who’s Online section (alpha 4)
• Product Attributes and Product Variants implementation (alpha 5)
• Dynamic Table Listings (Administration Tool) (alpha 5)
• Live Search (Administration Tool) (alpha 5)
• Administration Tool sections now self-contained Applications (alpha 5)
• Error Logging; both PHP and MySQL errors and warnings now logged (alpha 5)
  (forced runtime usage of PHP E_ALL and MySQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES)
• Stabilized Framework (alpha 5)
• Usage of JSON for RPC calls (alpha 5)
• Inclusion of jQuery v1.3.2 and jQuery UI v1.7 (alpha 5)

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Roadmap

The roadmap leading up to the final v3.0 release is defined as:

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Beta 1

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

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0

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

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.1

• Backup/Import/Export Features

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.2

• Gift Vouchers and Coupons

Social Coding on Github

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 is the first release using Git to attract an even greater wave of developers to help with the development of 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. 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 changes leading up to the final v3.0 release. Be ready to show the world your creativity in making osCommerce Online Merchant an even better e-commerce solution!

If you are new to Git, please review the guides available at Github to help get you started:

http://github.com/guides/home

Server Requirements

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 requires the following dependencies:

• PHP v5.2+ (with MySQLi extension)
• MySQL v4.1.13+ or v5.0.7+

Download

Information on downloading osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 can be found here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/downloads

We wish you the best of fun with this release and look forward to your feedback!

Release Errata

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 was released on the 14th March 2009. Since its release the download package has been updated to fix the following problems:

• Show server requirements during the installation routine
• Add a javascript check during the installation routine which is required for the installation routine and Administration Tool
• Fix the Administration Tool language import logic (http://svn.oscommerce.com/jira/browse/OSC-832)