Commerce blues or Why I am switching to tt_products:

[zylonne]

How I wish I had read a post like this before wasting literally weeks of my
time on typo3 commerce.  I bet that there are a lot of people out there like
me, who see the commerce extension and think, hmm, maybe worth a try.  Let
this posting be a warning to you! Here we go:

1. The Installation:
You can bring down your whole server just by clicking on "install this
extension". No dependency checks are made, and there are a LOT of
dependencies. Install all those extensions in the wrong order, and you will
have a blank screen, I mean, no Front End, NO BACKEND, NO TYPO3! Do not ever
install commerce  on a production server for the first time unless you think
it is fun desperately googling for help during a few panic stricken minutes
while your whole site is down.

2. Select Attributes:
For some reason the developers of commerce believe that the ability to
select attributes for your products is some kind of advanced functionality.
For example, you sell t-shirts. They come in 3 sizes and 5 colors.  The
commerce solution is to list ebay style 15 articles!  Oh but there is a way
to do it with drop down selects, only the code is broken, broken, broken and
has been for years. I finally got it working after spending many intimate
hours with the product php code. The problem?
Even when it works there is a fundamental structural flaw in the select
attribute code. Instead of using the radio/select form data itself,
javascript is used to set some hidden variable  that the basket page
expects.

BIG BUG: user selects color "yellow", javascript  reloads form. But  client
hits "Add to basket" immediately instead of waiting 2-3 seconds for the form
to reload.  The basket still shows the original selection, because there was
not enough time for the hidden form variables to get set.  I consider this a
serious bug since this is the single most important functionality of any
shop software "Add to basket".  No user will EVER understand that the reason
their attribute selection is not carried into the basket is because they hit
the button too fast.

3. No documentation for payment gateways:
I have looked everywhere, written everyone I could find to write, posted to
this list. There is simply no documentation anywhere on how to actually get
a payment gateway working. Sure there is the paymentlib, and the paymentlib
for commerce. I installed them. But when I configure everything that seems
reasonable to configure and hit that payment method all I get is this on
checkout "_ERROR". Maybe it works, but how can I know how without any docu?

4. Buggy Addresses:
Sometimes when I proceed to checkout I am asked to add an address, sometimes
not and the checkout skips right through to the end. I have no idea why.
Looking through the list there seems to be a long history of problems with
billing/delivery address. This afternoon was for me the final straw. First I
was offered the form, then I wasn't.  That's it. On to tt_products.

5. Clientitus:
This is by far the biggest problem with commerce. What is it? Clientitus is
a sickness that affects some, but not all, open source software projects.
90% of the code does what it is supposed to. 10% does not (see the
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-commerce/issues commerce bug list.
)  That 10% never gets fixed because everyone actually running commerce in
production is using some local branch.
Look, I understand as much as anyone that there is a need to make a living.
And I know how complicated it is to merge local branches to the main trunk.
But if those bugs never, ever get fixed in the main trunk of the project
(to say nothing about the TER version, 9.8, that is so fully non-functional
that the first thing everyone on this lists tells you to do is to get the
svn version) then a project has clientitus.
Cynics might say that the core developers intentionally foster clientitus
but I don't even believe that is true. I think they just don't have time to
deal with the main trunk and its many, many problems.

So, you like that fancy backend interface and still want to give it a try?
Be prepared for one of these 3 options:

1. Hire a commerce core programmer for 100EU/hour to get your commerce
working. Pay them again to merge the code each time a new version comes out.
2. Fix everything locally yourself. Then you never, ever upgrade to some
future version of commerce that has fewer or different bugs because your
code is all particular to your project.
3. Become a Commerce Saint. Join the core team with NO CLIENT paying you.
Devote your life to fixing all of the commerce bugs just to say you did.  

Signing off this list now, thanks to everyone who helped me here and
offlist. Good luck.

--
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Sent from the TYPO3 - Projects - Commerce mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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