How do I insert page into the checkout???

[jxm28788]

If I wanted to insert a page between the checkout pages how would I go about that?

I guess the 'prev' page would have to call my page somehow, then my page would have to call the 'next' page - but where/how?

[pinbrook]

The checkout pages are controlled by orderscript.pl so I assume you would need to get your hands dirty and mess with perl?

[jxm28788]

man, perl sure is ugly...

what's the difference between .PM and .PL files?

Spose I better start looking for a perl editor...

[NormanRouxel]

The .pl files are complete Perl programs. The .pm files are modules / libraries that are often loaded into programs via an include statement.

So OrderScript.pl will probably use an include to add code from ACTINIC.pm to itself.

[jxm28788]

is there a list of what each .pl does?

[jxm28788]

oo-er. the perl has actinic variables in as well - that makes viewing the results in the perl editor impossible - so it'll be like programming in the dark... (just like editing the html templates...)

Is there an actinic perl editing tool which resolves the actinc variables?

[NormanRouxel]

Perl is a seriously complex programming language that requires a moderate to expert amount of computer programming experience to use.

The slightest error in these scripts and all you'll get back is "Error 500 - Internal Server Error". You'll need root-level access to your servers error logs to see what actually happened.

Best run a local server with Apache / Perl / War-FTPd as per the advanced Guide to see ahat's happening without breaking your live site.

All a Perl editor can do is help with colouring in variables, keywords, etc. Unfortunately it won't help you write or understand Perl.

I doubt that there is any Actinic tool other than a good personal understanding of what the assorted NETQUOTEVAR's mean.

I use a simple text editor for all my Perl tweaking.

[jxm28788]

Is there any way of seeing what the .pl code is doing while it's running? I had thought that I could insert little bits of code that would display the state of various variables during execution - thus giving me a kind of basic debugger and helping to understand which bit of code did what...

however, now I've looked at the perl code I realise there doesn't seem to be any way to do that - if I insert

print"\n$weirdvariablename";

into the perl then it doesn't actually print it anywhere as all the output seems to go into a html file but that seems to be done by a small function somewhere (which I haven't found yet) so it would only really help for that function (if I could find it).

So an editor with built in debugger is no good because of the actinic variables, and this method doesn't work either - is there any way to actually figure out what's going on without reading through 8000 lines of code (and that's just the order process.pl) and trying to figure the whole thing out in my head???

I used to be a programmer, but figuring out thouasands of lines of someone elses code with no debugger and no ability to see it running seems like an impossible task - there must be a way...

[jxs97s]

There's one other problem with editing the Perl scripts. As soon as up install an upgrade to actinic, you may well lose the changes you made to the Perl. The two ways around this are (1) never install upgrades, however useful or (2) make detailed notes about the changes you made to the scripts.

James

[jxm28788]

that could explain the total lack of any useful add-ons for actinic (excluding the very useful offline tools from mole of course ). I have a site that uses Miva and the great thing about it is that there are tons of really useful modules that do just about anything you might need. But actinic has virtually nothing - i guess this is why... Unfortunately, the order processing site of miva is complete crap which is why I'm still here...

[NormanRouxel]

I patch the Perl scripts all the time. Some of my useful add-ons need changes to 4 of the scripts to operate.

When an Actinic update comes along I use the excellent open-source WinMerge program (www.winmerge.org) to compare the new and old and move my bits across.

Before I discovered WinMerge, it was a matter of slogging my way through both files in a text editor looking for my changes (I always prefix my variables with a unique name) and copy / pasting them into the new.

[NormanRouxel]

When I want to debug Perl patches I add a few lines of cope that writes something to a text file (in acatalog) that I can then look at with via ftp or browser. E.g.

open(F,">" . ACTINIC::GetPath() . "testing.txt");  
print F    "Var1: $myvar1 \nVar2: $myvar2";
close F;

Then http://www.mysite.com/acatalog/testing.txt will show me what was written.

[jxm28788]

excellent - that's what I need... thanks.