Shiny Red Apples

Ahhhh .. the joys of development are again prevailing! ;-) The work involved from the third 3.0 alpha release onwards actually produces frontend changes that can be proudly shown rather than writing again about the backend changes for the new framework that was worked on in the MS3 -> 3.0alpha1 and 3.0alpha2 releases.

Not that the backend changes were not needed; it’s just more exciting to work on something where the results can not only be experienced (performance, security, optimizations, ..) but also seen!

Last week I was in contact again with some payment providers regarding test accounts and technical implementation documentation for the work involved in updating the payment modules for the 3.0alpha3 release. The contact made here will definitely strengthen during the next couple of weeks as the work involved here matures, and will also increase due to the amount of payment providers out there.

The first payment gateway I received a test account and technical documentation to was Switzerland based SaferPay. They have two methods to perform transactions over; the primary means is through a binary/executable file they provide that communicates with their gateway (similar to using cURL), and the second means is via SOAP. As I didn’t have sufficient documentation for the SOAP method I went ahead and played around with the binary/executable method. What I don’t like about this method is that PHP needs access to the exec() function, and that is passes the credit card number to the binary/executable as an argument. This can be dangerous for a shared server environment, and hope to have some implementation questions answered during the new week.

The SOAP method should address such issues for shared server environments, and think that those using the binary/executable file are on secured dedicated servers anyway.

The work made here and the addition of the SaferPay payment module is the first payment module that is able to communicate to its payment gateway after an order has been processed. This allows the store owner to perform transaction actions to an order via the osCommerce Administration Tool, and no longer relies on doing the same actions on the payment gateway administrative interface. This should however be considered a “luxury” feature and not a “payment gateway administrative interface” replacement 8)

The SaferPay gateway allows the osCommerce Administration Tool to “approve” and “cancel” a financial transaction to an order, and to “inquire” about it’s current status.

The default transaction method for the module is to keep the financial transaction on hold. That means the checkout procedure checks to see if there are sufficient funds on the credit card, and holds it until the store owner is ready to accept the payment and to ship the products ordered.

Attached is a movie demonstrating this. There is a new “Transactions History” tab added to the Order Edit page where the transaction history is shown. The statuses are still shown as numbers but will be replaced with textual equivalents similar to how the Order Statuses are implemented. (Please also note that this is not the final layout of the order edit page)

After the order has been processed, the financial transaction status of the order changes on the payment gateway from “Reservation” to “Payment” to “Cancellation Payment”, performed via the osCommerce Administration Tool. The “inquiry” transaction action is also automatically performed after the financial transaction status changes to provide more information to the store owner on the same page. This will end up being a parameter for the payment module as it requires two requests to the payment gateway to be made, which slows things down by .. err.. 1 request ;-)

I’ll keep the blog up to date on the progress made here with this and the other payment modules.

I returned from my break on the weekend and greatly enjoyed the time I had off. The thoughts of having a lot of snow here was smashed when experiencing the amount this corner of Germany receives.

I was in Bayern for a week at Tegernsee, with the break starting off with a delay due to the clutch needing to be repaired in my car and due to some havoc weather Bayern had that weekend. The good luck in the bad of needing to have my car repaired at the last minute, was to not experience the long traffic jams the bad weather had caused. There was a person on the news who said it had taken him 19 hours to drive from München to Köln, where it would normally take around 6. This was exactly the route that needed to be taken and was lucky to have taken it without any problems leaving a couple of days later.

This changed the week at Tegernsee from Sun-Sun to Tue-Tue and meant a lot of driving on the way back as I wanted to (still) catch the last day of Cebit at Hannover on Wednesday, at the other end of Germany 8O

The week at Tegernsee was full of sightseeing, walking, and drinking. It’s great walking for hours when it is snowing, ageing slowly with white hair, white eyebrows, and rosey cheeks, to have some hot chocolate in a restaurant at the top of a mountain 8)

These pictures were taken at Wallberg, which is about 1,600m above sea level:

The last picture is of Tegernsee.

Here you can see the amount of snow that was on the side of the walking paths and on top of the roofs:

The obligatory snowman ..

and drink ;-)

That was at the Hofbräuhaus in München - a valid candidate for a public meeting location 8)

As a week wasn’t enough, we’ve booked another break there again for the end of September, to experience the area in another season and to catch the Oktoberfest :D

The day at Cebit wasn’t quite my thing but did have a quick chat with the people from Ogone concerning their payment solutions and our next release, specifically the work for the next alpha release regarding payment modules.

The night in Hannover actually made it worth the drive there and had a great time at Brauhaus Ernst August and a quick stop at an Irish Pub before finding the way back to our Hotel ;-) So next year I’ll just skip the Cebit part and go straight to the pubs :D

I was hoping to have caught up with other payment providers at Cebit for contact reasons, but didn’t find any others - atleast any that I knew by name. The payment modules is what I will be working on next for the next 3.0 alpha release, and look forward to catching up with the contacts made to actually get the most out of each payment gateway to actually process orders on the Administration Tool rather than only approving/disapproving them.

A change that is now occurring is my focus on team management having priority over development. I had this the other way around in the past to get the releases out the door but now that we are getting closer and closer to a stable release (3.0), the team needs to strengthen itself due to the increase of responsibility the stable release will bring. This may seem easy from the outside, but it’s not :-) Managing a group of volunteers brings more grey hairs than managing a group of employees ;-) This is something we are slowly moving towards, which also brings in its own layer of difficulty to deal with at the same time (to keep everyone happy; community members included).

What fun would this be though if it was a piece of cake? There’s enough hard work here to earn my next break in September ;-)

.. well, we’re not quite there yet but the 78th Oscar awards are currently running ;-)

The second alpha testing release to the 3.0 version has been released to our sponsors for testing! This release includes a lot of work made for the new database based language implementation and to the checkout procedure for cleaning the execution logic.

I look forward to the feedback provided here, and for the work now being done for the third alpha testing release where visual changes can (atlast) be seen 8)

I’m also going to be away for a week on a well deserved break (from work, and from Karneval ;-)), and will spend some offline time in Southern Bayern (Tegernsee). Lets see how far I get with the snow chaos there at the moment :P