New MageBridge build
Friday, 07 May 2010We never sit still. While major MageBridge versions are only released once in a while, minor builds are released quickly to address specific problems. But the latest build took some time to be released (3 weeks). This delay was mainly due to testing, and the reason why we needed testing was because some important bugs were fixed.
Empty cart - a very specific problem
One of the bugs that have been solved in the latest build, is a bug which was already open for several months - mainly because we were unable to replicate the bug (which is the first step in fixing the bug). Finally, we were able to reproduce the problem - complete with full logging enabled - and after that a fix was made available quickly.
The problem was that when a customer entered the MageBridge checkout, registered for the first time, and paid through specific payment providers, the customer would come back to the store after a successfull payment - but not to find the usual "Thank you" page, but to find an empty cart message instead. While the payment was handled successfuly, the Magento order was left pending and the customer was left confused.
... and a complicated reason
The reason why this went wrong, was that the customer record was created during the last steps in the checkout, and the customer was logged in through its newly created login, but this caused Magento to generate a system event which was forwarded by MageBridge to Joomla!, where it was used by the Joomla! User plugin to wipe out the current session and start a new session instead - there for loosing the cart.
Confused? So were we. But this case actually proves that MageBridge is very stable, and only in very specific circumstances specific problems may arise. Those of you who know Magento, know that this is nothing special when software offers more functionality.
No more bugs!
The good thing is that at the moment there are no more pending bugs to fix. Saying that might give the impression that there's no more work to be done. Of course, the opposite is true. It gives us the ability to work on new features. The latest MageBridge build adds some enhancements that make the bridge easier to use, but some other new features were added that add to the complexity (ehm, functionality) of MageBridge. Once again the challenge is to make everything more user friendly than before.