My efforts have been diverted for the present on other issues that have been brought up. As far the official task of integration via my workplace it has been abandoned...But fear not! I have had enough response on this that I will continue to try to bridge the gap between these two titans. I would say at this point I have mastered the Virtuemart (phpShop) component's code and I am working presently on fully understanding CB's setup as well. As soon as I get to a point where there are specific issues I am dealing with, I will post these items so that I can get assistance from the community. For now, suffice it to say that my ability to alter the code is steadily improving. I appreciate all the support. More specifics on what I have done thus far to come...

The first steps of a solution are upon us...

I have managed to set up a system that bypasses most of the duplicate authorizations that are requested by the shop component when first entering the shop. Right now if you set up a CB account you are autoregistered as a Shop user. I have not integrated far enough to actually translate the fields over so the billing information is not yet translated over.

This is registration array of successfully registered customer.

Array (
[show_prices] => 1
[user_id] => 116
[username] => ako
[perms] => shopper
[first_name] => john
[last_name] => doe
[country] => USA
[zip] => 50000
[shopper_group_id] => 5
[shopper_group_discount] => 0.00
[show_price_including_tax] => 1
[default_shopper_group] => 1
[is_registered_customer] => 1
)

This is registration array for someone logged in but not registered with Shop.

Array (
[show_prices] => 1
[user_id] => 117
[username] => bobbob
[perms] => shopper
[shopper_group_id] => 0
[shopper_group_discount] => 0.00
[show_price_including_tax] => 1
[default_shopper_group] => 1
[is_registered_customer] =>
)

As you will notice as part of the registered authorization the shop reads the fields you have entered for first_name, last_name, country and zip (as well as marking customer registered (which is really just a check that their is BT (billing) information present.)

The rest is already autoassigned. The difficulty in the final integration is that VM uses straight predined names for its fields while CB uses dynamic user defined fields for everything save the basic user data (name, username, email).

I have a feeling to integrate it so that data matches up I will either have to set up a naming convention or a series of tests for appropriate fields. I have a feeling the naming conventions would work better and I can just write up a short and descriptive setup doc with detailed screenshots.

Any thoughts on any portion of that?
Oh, I also was interested if anyone thought I was creating any security issues by setting up dummy values for [first_name] => john [last_name] => doe [country] => USA [zip] => 50000 and by skipping the registered user test.

Well, I will keep plugging in my spare time. Have fun all.

I figured I would try to get everyone to clarify the issues we are dealing with in terms of integration/registration. There are several options for proceeding but I want to try to meet the needs of most people who are looking for this project to succeed.

Just let me know where everyone stands...

PROBLEM 1: Currently users have to register twice. Once with VM and once with CB.

PROBLEM 2: Data entered on one does not translate into data entered on another. (except for basic login info--email, username etc.)

SOLUTION IN PROGRESS:
Force one login via CB,
Autoregister them so they NEVER register via VM.

(this still leaves no billing information stored in VM)
The next step would be to find a way to standardize info we collect from CB to what we need for a billing address in VM and write that data from CB database to VM database.


If everyone could stick up a post and talk to me about individual issues or where this would leave people. I already have found a way to force single login via CB and autoregister them in VM. (no data transferred yet just one login point and registered as shopper in VM)

thanks,
dano

I have found that in Netscape and Firefox, if a new user tries to make a purchase in VM they can add to cart, register, choose shipping address, but when they click the next page their cart is empty and it spits them back to the homepage.

They can login, but their cart is still empty. Once they add their items to cart and try to check out the cart empties again.

This will keep happening until I resync the database table in CB.

I am using Joomla 1.0.8 / Virtuemart 1.2 / CB2

-Holsum

Post edited by: holsum, at: 2006/02/28 21:06

Greetings Holsum,

Just out of curiosity are you using a secure site at all for the shop component...that sounds like a problem I have had that has to do with the SSL shared certificate rather than database stuff...but I could be wrong...it justs sounds similar.

So I didn't have any SSL setup in virtuemart. I am using a shared secure socket, so I found my secured path to the site and pluged it into virtuemart.

Sure enough it worked, but with one annoying feature.

Everytime a page loads in the secure section I get this prompted "You have requested an encrypted page that contains unencrypted information..."

I assume that this has to do with the path to the images on the site, but how can you correct this?

-Holsum