Community Builder integration

[sync]

Hi Soeren,

I've started work on a Community Builder plugin to integrate Virtuemart with CB. It's still at alpha stage (some critical known bugs) but we're receiving some good feedback too! However we will need to alter the Virtuemart code in a couple of places to ensure a proper integration - for instance the pages where CB lets a user register should be directed to the CB registration.

Rather than just hack the Virtuemart files, if I was to include an option or check in the administration options for Virtuemart that allowed people to turn on CB integration (and replace these sections of code with CB-friendly ones) could this be integrated into the main Virtuemart project? It'd be great if we could just use the standard Virtuemart release and not have to worry about hacking each new version.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Ben. (e-motion design)

VM/CB Plugin: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/vmart_cb/
( go to 'files' menu item to download the latest version )

[audiopleb]

What are the features of this plugin? What will it do! Will there be a tab to list the customers previous orders?

Sounds great, i'd love to know what the integration does!

praps i should install it and find out....

[doctorlife]

In any case I think that open a specific topic about features into Joomla.org can be a very good idea !

What do you think sync ?

Emiliano alias doctorlife

[gwen]

Hi Sync,

good idea

what about the feature tell us more to see if we can modify the VM core in 1.1 for th CB integration

[sync]

What are the features of this plugin? What will it do! Will there be a tab to list the customers previous orders?

Sounds great, i'd love to know what the integration does!

praps i should install it and find out....

Yeah that's probably the best way to find out!

But in brief, it tries to take the VM registration/user account options and push them into the CB registration pages so that the Joomla site can have one intergration registration and account maintenance section, and other components can of course be integrated too using other CB plugins.

[sync]

In any case I think that open a specific topic about features into Joomla.org can be a very good idea !

What do you think sync ?

Emiliano alias doctorlife

Not a bad idea at all doctorlife!

I've been meaning to post about the last couple of CB plugins I've made on the official Joomla site, but I've been flat-out working on other projects lately and haven't had time to as yet. I've got to come back and finish the project that was the cause of me working on this CB-VM integration to begin with, so when I do that (which will be in the next week or so) I'll get back to working through the bugtracker and working on a more stable release of the plugin.

[sync]

Hi Sync,

good idea

what about the feature tell us more to see if we can modify the VM core in 1.1 for th CB integration

Hi Gwen,

Sure - as of VM 1.0.5 the required changes to VM are very small. I've had to modify the checkout.index.php file only - and that file has just three minor modifications. You can see the source of the altered file here:
JoomlaForge: CB/VM Plugin: SVN: virtuemart_hacks/1.0.5/checkout.index.php
The three altered spots have been commented above and below with '*** Ben', you can see the changes are fairly minor.

What I was imagining is that we could add a new option to the VM backend (like I did in this thread for 3 letter state codes):
VM Forum: 3 letter state code hack
And get this switch to 'enable CB integration' - and when this option was turned on, we could output the altered bits of code from my hacked file (just by wrapping the required sections in an if/else block).
  Or we could go even further and automatically detect if CB has been installed and enable the option automatically - however it's probably better to leave it as a user-selectable item so that an administrator can install CB and configure and test things before they actually turn-on the integration.

If it'd be helpful, I'm more than willing to alter the VM admin pages and send through the diff's or the altered files - that's if you think my strategy above is a good one! I'm not familiar at all with the VM project development methodology so don't know if what I outline above will be acceptable or not.

Thanks for your time though, and any feedback would be great!

Cheers,
Ben.

[joomladude]

Hey Ben,
I am building a huge Joomla! based site for a client (a very active Church organization) which is heavily relying on CB 1.0.1 and Virtuemart 1.0.6 and was all puzzled how to get these two fine components to communicate withe each other. A couple hours ago I came accros your great work on Joomla! forge and voila! I am all set and ready to go.

I noticed that your work is covering up to VM version 1.0.5 but I installed it on a 1.0.6 version with the exception of changing the last 4-5 lines of the code and it works like a charm.

I think this has to be included as a standard feature with both CB and VM new releases and thank you very much bud for your hard work!

Keep up the great work!

JD

[gwen]

Hi Sync,

Did you contact Soeren ? this is him who actually manage the project of course
I'm now making a new shop also with CB integration I'll come back to you soon

[sync]

Did you contact Soeren ? this is him who actually manage the project of course
I'm now making a new shop also with CB integration I'll come back to you soon

No I haven't contacted Soeren directly, I know how busy he is! So I just posted this thread and I figure he can read it and think about it when he has time. It got stickied pretty quickly though so I figured that was Soeren and he thought it was interesting!

[sync]

Hey Ben,
I am building a huge Joomla! based site for a client (a very active Church organization) which is heavily relying on CB 1.0.1 and Virtuemart 1.0.6 and was all puzzled how to get these two fine components to communicate withe each other. A couple hours ago I came accros your great work on Joomla! forge and voila! I am all set and ready to go.

I noticed that your work is covering up to VM version 1.0.5 but I installed it on a 1.0.6 version with the exception of changing the last 4-5 lines of the code and it works like a charm.

I think this has to be included as a standard feature with both CB and VM new releases and thank you very much bud for your hard work!

Keep up the great work!

JD

Thanks heaps for your comments JD!

I plan to get onto a 1.0.6 hack within the next week or so - shouldn't take me long I just have to adjust that checkout.index.php file. When you say it worked but you had to change the last 5-6 lines of code, what code do you mean? - the checkout.index.php file?

Also, this will be the home-page for the plugin once it's released properly:
e-motion design: VM/CB plugin
I'm waiting until it's more stable before I do a proper page for it, but that's my employer and it's during work-time that I'm working on this plugin (it started as an adjustment for a client of ours but we thought it'd be nice to try and give something back to all the coders that have made this all possible!).
For now the forge is still the best place to go though, and bug-tracking and downloads will always be managed through Joomlaforge..

[sync]

Ok another release this morning, I'm feeling that this is fairly stable and might push the status to beta (from alpha) sometime soon.

Changelog:
0.1.4 Added option to show/hide shipping address
Set default values for parameters
Added optional gap below output section
Re-fill info on reload of rego page
Takes rego page title from tab title
0.1.3 Country now required, state not required
Admin can alter users 'permissions' (for shop)
Admin can alter 'customer number'
Admin can alter 'shopper group'
0.1.2 Added user title info
Tidied post-rego notices
Edit shipping address in admin section workaround
Show break if title hidden
Bank account info working
0.1.1 Fixed rego bug
0.1 First release

I gave this a test on CB 1.0.1, Joomla 1.0.10 and VM 1.0.6 - also included a checkout.index.php file for VM 1.0.6. All seems to be working well! (at least on the setups I've tried it on)

[gwen]

hi sync,

I begin the test.

you wrote in the read me file
"COMPONENTS

There are two components to this release:
plug_virtuemart : The CB plugin for virtuemart integration. Install as a CB plugin.
virtuemart_hacks: Hacked Virtuemart files. Replace the original VM files with these.
More docs are included in each component."

take attention a plugin is not a component (as so called in joomla)
I do have to make my own zip in order to install the CB plugin, you might redo your zip file for the other who need just a click working solution ;-)

[gwen]

Hi Sync,

Ok it seems to be working.

However, I don't like the process, I mean go to checkout, go to CB, and need to go back once again in check out.
So I'll hack your hack  or the easiest way would be to have the CB field required and the VM field in the same page as on VM when you don't use the auto completion password

moreover I guess we do have to change this line of code in virtuemart.php CB plugin also

Code: [Select]

DEFINE( '_VIRTUEMART_SECRET' , 'xxxx' ); in order to get our own secret key, right ?

I don't know how works the CB plugin, I do not have the VM field required, actually I filled the nickname, name, email, etc...
and log in to the website, and redo the checkout and here I see that VM don't ask for the email for example, so you're on the good road ! :-)

in order to make a good shop, not a geek place  we need:
1/ if the CB registration is on a page alone (has it is now), at least the registration process should avoid us to enter the nickname choosen and the password (I've already made this on phpshop and an old CB...), plus we need to have an automatic redirection to the checkout process from VM (all as to be hidden for the user)

2/if the CB registration field can be integrated in the checkout_register_form.php it would be better for the non geek understanding

3/ the better way would be to hack VM in order to populate CB with the new data just entered I'va also done that on phpshop...)
it's the better way in word of graphics integration and logical process for our costumers who're not 12 horus a day on their keyboard (like us I guess ;-) )
I guess I'll make the third option, let me know what you think ?

I love the way you use the plugin cause it's actually a very easy hack to implement inthe core for the future, but I don't like the checkout process, you understand ? (sorry for my english I'm french)

[Nicap]

I can't get it to work with dutch languages. I'm using CB 1.01, VM 1.06 and Joomla 1.0.10. I switched to english and it worked OK.

Is it possible to get it working with dutch languages?