small bug: Case-sensitive link -v- internal search

[Laylah]

More of an inconsistency than a bug . . .

Setting up affiliate links we find that using l008-7 (for product L008-7) is returned as 'product not found' whereas using 'search' the product is found.

Links from other sites to Actinic are apparently case-sensitive whereas internal searches are not.

[Ben]

Hi Tony

My feeling is that this is probably due to the case sensitivity of the server or browser rather than Actinic because the URL is contained in the link, but I would have to check to be certain. Do you have an example of an affiliate link to your site?

Ben

[Laylah]

Hi Ben

Interesting thought! We have been wrestling in other areas with seemingly identical computers yielding different results . . . even IE and Norton versions seemingly same versions and update status give different results . . . any way the links are . . .

This link is to l008-7 (with lowercase L)http://www.mandrakepress.com/cgi/aff....com/acatalog/


This link is to L008-7
http://www.mandrakepress.com/cgi/aff....com/acatalog/


The only difference between the two links above is the 'case' of the 'L' for the product.



The L008-7 link in plain text is "http://www.mandrakepress.com/cgi/affiliate/clickme.cgi?exec=MAND02&site=site1&fd=cgi/ss000004.pl?PRODREF=L008-7&NOLOGIN=1&ACTINIC_REFERRER=http://www.mandrakepress.com/acatalog/"

[Laylah]

I would be interested to know your results . . . is it a Browser/WIN/IE issue?

[Ben]

Hmmm, my initial suspicions seem to be wrong because the resultant URL, http://www.mandrakepress.com/acatalo...html#aL008_2d7 is the same as http://www.mandrakepress.com/acatalo...html#al008_2d7

I'm still thinking on this one ...

[cdicken]

It seems that our search is case-sensitive. We are currently investigating whether it is possible to patch the search script to make it case insensitive.

[cdicken]

Here is the official word from the development team:

----------------------------------------

This (case-sensitivity) is by design, so the correct solution is to use the exact product reference in the referrer link.

If you do not want to change the links then the search can be modified to convert all passed references to uppercase (assumes that all product references are uppercase).

To do this...

1) Edit Actinic.pm

2) Search for 'sub ProductSearch'

A couple of lines below this you will see...

undef %$rhashProduct;

3) Insert an extra line just above it so it now reads as...

$sProductReference = uc($sProductReference);
undef %$rhashProduct;

[Laylah]

Hi Chris

Thanks for that but my point was that external calls to the search ARE case-sensitive whereas internal (or on-site) Actinic searches ARE NOT.

i.e. a008-7 is returned as product not found by an external call from an affiliate link whereas a008-7 finds product A008-7 when the onsite search facility is used.

I was suggesting we might have consistency between the two methods . . . case sensitive is preferable . . . imho.