Details

Written by: Max Milbers

Category: Latest News

Published: 27 August 2019

Hits: 29243

More than 10000 commits later

With this version VirtueMart has exceeded the 10 000 code commits mark and approximately 150 commits have been integrated into VirtueMart since we released the last stable version of VirtueMart 3.4.x a while ago. In the meantime we have released some development and release candidate versions. Among the many improvements and small bug fixes, here are some of the more noteworthy changes:

For Shop Owners

Enhancing the edit order feature was a very hard nut to crack and took much longer than expected. We did implement additional attributes like the "is Paid", which allows shop owners to see confirmed but unpaid orders, which is especially of interest for purchases on account and also for paid but refunded orders. There are also some features that will be rarely visible, e.g. an unpaid order for the order status "Refund" shows the message "not recommended" because unpaid and not yet delivered orders should simply be cancelled.

The old function for displaying missing medias in the VirtueMart 'Media List', was just a filter over the loaded list. Previously it was only possible to search within the first 400 medias for missing ones. The problem here obviously was that the job can't be done just by an sql query. It must check the state of a media in the filesystem. So it was ‘impossible’ to list them on pages following the first one. The new function runs the query up to 1000 times, but stops when the first page is filled. Lets assume, the pagination is set to 30 and there are 500 missing medias within the first 30 000 medias, then it just displays the first 30. On the other hand, if the pagination is set to 400 and you have 399 missing media out of 400 000, you would see those missing 399 missing media.

iStraxx donated a simplified version of their ‘Download Plugin’. It allows to download a file once. It is of course working with indirect links, which means the user gets a link pointing to the plugin and the plugin decides if the user gets a file.

For Developers

Since we pay a lot of attention to the desires of plugin developers, shipment/payment methods can now use new restriction parameters provided by the core, which are very simple to implement. See our tutorial link for more details: https://docs.virtuemart.net/tutorials/development/236-update-payment-shipment-plugin-using-new-core-restrictions.html

There is a major change in vmAccess. The new system checks for rights without checking a task only for admin/manager. When a task is given, it checks only for the task. The old system always checked against admin/manager plus given tasks.

There are some new permissions and some have been removed. In the case of backend user input, the "vm.raw" and "vm.html" permission filters have been removed. We now use the Joomla validator for input.

Spyros Petrakis added a nice feature: The category module can now be displayed using the menu seperator of joomla. Just use the desired menu and id as a class, for example mod_virtuemart_category-id.

Future development

There are many ideas in the roadmap for VirtueMart. Currently we are working on a new frontend template with the very famous template developer "Virtueplanet" and a lot more is evolving in the background. At present we also need helping hands for the new backend template. Join our team! Becoming a team member is simple. Just demonstrate in our forum that you know what you are talking about and write a request here  http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?board=139.0

Another idea is to make VirtueMart available for Wordpress users. We also need helping hands here. The idea is to use the Joomla libraries as much as possible, which is why we will also work on Joomla 4.

Further ideas for the VirtueMart core are: Enhanced calculator, enhanced multichilds, enhanced display (more radios with images instead of dropdowns), adapting the joomla customfield system and so forth....

Other changes

Shopowner:

• new hidden config "hideEmptyCustomfields" hides empty customfields
• search customfields, removed options of empty customfields
• new switch "newBackendTemplate". Just add to the virtuemart.cfg newBackendTemplate=1 to try the new backend template. Currently only the configuration view is updated.
• translateable calculation rule names
• vendor mail if order status changed has adjustable text per order status now COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_VENDOR_CONTENT_
• removed storing of cart to table for normal cart calls
• enhanced snippets.php for Searchengines
• enhanced coupon listing,
• added published to coupons
• delivery address get automatically named with the zip and a random number
• buttons for the add-to-cart popup
• removed the second button group on top to avoid problems with captchas.
• validateUserData, validation of the country/state works now also when the state is unpublished
• fixed custom model, in case of wrong extension_id, updating now to the correct extension_id
• attachment for emails: Very important fix, views are instances and so attached medias must be set to an empty array to prevent sending wrong attachments

Major updates for the cart

• loading an old cart does not override already entered values
• defaults are now correctly loaded not only into the fields but also into the cart address arrays
• automatic selected ship/payment works now loading all available methods. Before it was only working if there was only one method left.
• Fixed Paypal Smartbuttons
• product added popup (padded.php) displays now actually added product amount (set in the cart helper)
• product model, loading price should now consider the time offset correctly
• removed dragndrop ordering for products, if there is more than one page (the js is not prepared for)
• removed print view popup of invoices. It produced a different print, than by pdf.

Developer

• new loading of Plugins to ensure correct execution sequence. In case of site, they are loaded directly in loadConfig. replaced JPluginHelper::importPlugin against VmConfig::importVMPlugins
• Important fix for 404 handling to prevent loop when an unpublished category is browsed
• fixed 404 in case controller was not found
• moved the classes vmAccess, vmUri in extra files
• moved Reporting/echo function in an own file
• product model enhanced sql for omitted products
• fixed json view for customplugins in edit customs, dropdowns were not correctly loaded and got stored with wrong default values
• which lead to wrong default order status for some 3rd party plugins, therefor also a fix for the field orderstatus to load comma seperated default values correctly
• new function getStrByAcl to get Strings from the Request by ACL
• moved the price display of plugins in an own sublayout.
• added new permission vm.user.editvendor, IMPORTANT the permission vm.user.editshop should be set for the shop owner respectivly the super admin only!
• enhanced setStoreOwner function, which considers the multivendor configuration of the shop now
• changed the initialising of the cart so, that it always loads the userfields with the default values first. Function prepareAddressFieldsInCart is now deprecated
• extra checks in the table vmusers for user/vendor relation
• replaced a continue in a switch against break for php7.3 compatibility
• disabled loading of the jQuery framework from joomla completly if jQuery is disabled in the vm config (by Abhishek)
• disabled loading of popup fancybox/facebox if jQuery is disabled (by Abhishek)
• final update for TcPdf,
  a) updated paths,
  b) added an hint why there are no images and removed breaking rendering for missing images
  c) VmPdf got more error messages and should load the defines by itself, class VmVendorPDF is not anylonger wrapped in if(class_exists('TCPDF')){
• replaced the file_get_contents against the modern JHttpFactory::getHttp
• product details, fixed canonical URL of the parent product
• address fields in the cart can now be initialized filled only with default values but without rendered html and js scripts
• added variable to the cart, which keeps the values set by defaults to determine if a value is set by the user or the system
• addJScript uses now the defer and async correctly again.
• Important fix, related to svn 10005 and forum post http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=141797.0- Important fix, related to svn 10005 and forum post http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=141797.0This time, a missing customfield is directly added as array to the variantmods array

For Templaters

• Invoice view, the address fields are now directly accessible, for example with echo $this->userfields['BT']['email']

Performance optimisations

• userfield model country field, replaced direct sql by VmTableCountry (getTable,...)
• payment/shipment methods, added cache and own function for getting shoppergroups. This prevents one call per plugin n the cart.
• VmPlugin, added important cache for function selectedThisByMethodId
• getPluginMethods is cached
• router is now using the same parameters as used for product browsing, which saves again a lot sql (products are not extra loaded for router!).
• product model added cached function getCurrentUserShopperGrps, function getProduct finds the CurrentUserShopperGrps itself before it needed to be called before the getProduct function. Same function used in getProductSingle and getProducts!
• enhanced the checkIfCached function, so the router can most time find an already loaded product
• model customfields, enhanced also the cache of the function getCustomEmbeddedProductCustomFields
• optimization for the functions getCountryByID and getCountryIDByName and the country model, loading a country creates directly multiple keys for the cached entry.
• added important improvement, removed random in sql, the randomizing of products is done by loading more than needed an array_shuffle
• router uses now also the cached Table class (reduced sql drastically)
• added autohashing of tables (if set in the constructor)
• model userfields replaced single requests in function getIfRequired against one but cached request.
• Fixed caching in customfields model, loading a product twice with different quantities loaded the customfields plus the cached ones
• Caching in model state functions getStates and testStateCountry
• Caching in mediahandler function getIcon
• getVmPluginMethod set false as default for parameter cache

...and many other minor features, fixes, corrections. See the complete list of commits at http://dev.virtuemart.net/projects/virtuemart/repository