emailconfirmation on first bid

[piet]

hi,

another question:

I don't receive an emailconfirmation on the first biddings, only from the next (higher) biddings. ("outbid")
Is there a mod to fix this?
regards,
Piet

[shannah]

Thanks for pointing this out. This has been pointed out before by other users but somehow I neglected to add the fix to the source code base. I have added a patch for this at:
http://bugs.weblite.ca/view.php?id=167

[piet]

Don't understand what is "unix patch utility". I've uploaded the patchfile to my web directory, but then what? I tried the admin panel of my webhost (Plesk 7.5.4), but can't find anything related to this patch utility.
As mentioned before I'm a novice, and English isn't my native language (I'm Dutch), so this is all a bit difficult for me to understand.
Sorry to trouble you, but some help would be highly appreciated.
(I guess copy / paint doesn't do the job?)

Thanks

[shannah]

Ah. Yes. You would require shell access to use a program like patch (it is pretty standard for open source development).

The only change made was in the includes/functions.inc.php file. Specifically to the notifyHighBidder() function.

You can see the patched source at
http://demo.weblite.ca/source-browser.p ... ns.inc.php

[piet]

Hi,

I saved the modified file (http://xataface.com/documentation/tutor ... taface-0.6 as "functions.inc.php", and replaced it with the one in my web directory, which resulted in this message:

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home/vhosts/xxxx.nl/httpdocs/webauction/include/functions.inc.php:1) in /home/vhosts/xxxxx.nl/httpdocs/webauction/dataface/Dataface/Application.php on line 626

any ideas what happend?

[shannah]

Evidently when you copied and pasted the code it has some trailing white space after the closing '?>' tag.

To fix this problem you can
a) Make sure you remove all white space after the trailing '?>' tag
or
b) Remove the trailing '?>' tag itself (at the end of the file).

[piet]

Hi Steve,

You are fast!!
Removing the white space after the trailing '?>' tag cleared the job.
That wasn't hard for me Thanks very much.
I have more questions. Hope you don't mind.

1) would it be difficult to have the script send a mail to the user to confirm his / her bid first, prior to accept the bid?

2) Leaving the field "closing time" blank when adding or editing a product, prohibits to place a bid. Filling in an ending date (lying in the future) makes bidding possible. I would prefer to let both fields blank, and not showing any opening or closing date on the corresponding product page.

Hope I don't give you a headache. Thx. Piet

[shannah]

It wouldn't be difficult

would it be difficult to have the script send a mail to the user to confirm his / her bid first, prior to accept the bid?

Not difficult, but it would need to be implemented as an optional setting because this behavior may not be desired for all auctions. You can add this as a feature request in the bug tracker if you like and it may end up in a future version.

If you want to hack it yourself to add this feature you would start by looking in the makeBid() function in the include/functions.inc.php file. However there are some fine points you need to consider when implementing a feature like this. For example, if a user bids, during the time between the bid and when he confirms it in the email, is the bidding on that product locked? Does the price get incremented as if the bid had been made? Can other users still bid on it? Etc... This fine point would cause you the most headaches in your implementation.

-Steve