芳草苑

Author: 芳草苑主

  • We can not argue with PayPal

    我用 PayPal 多年，但还是得不时应付意想不到的新情况。

    因为 PayPal 不是我公司的主 PSP，我也不是 PayPal 帐户的日常管理者，所以当我注意到7月底一笔交易被标注上 Reversal 时已经是8月底了。当时忙，没去理会。这笔交易虽然被 reversed，但没有通知我们有 dispute，在 Resolution Centre 也找不到这条记录，直接就被 reversed。可能当时 PayPal 有发邮件，但我不是 PayPal 邮件的接收者，大概那信跟一般的到款扣款通知太相似，我同事收到也没警觉（PayPal 的大部分信我们都不看）。9月底我有空了，想起这桩事，打电话给 PayPal 问原因。

    我以前知道 PayPal 独创了 eCheque，顾客在 PayPal 余款不够时仍可以下单，款项由 PayPal 从顾客的银行帐户里划，PayPal 划款成功后再转给我们，通常需要5到7个工作日。我们的 bookkeeper 恨死了 eCheque，因为它给帐目处理带来了极大的麻烦——这时题外话。

    eCheque 虽然麻烦，但还是安全的。可我以前不知道，顾客在 PayPal 余款不够时还有另一种付款办法，就是 instant payment。仍是由 PayPal 从顾客的银行帐户里划，但 PayPal 即时就划款给我们，如同顾客用 PayPal 余款付款。如果日后 PayPal 从顾客的银行帐户里划款失败，PayPal 就把钱从卖家帐上 reverse 过去。必须是 bank account verified 的顾客才能用 instant payment。如果卖家对 reversal 有异议，必须在 reversal 之日起7日提出。

    一切都是 PayPal 定的规矩，不给人 argue 的余地。我是一个喜欢规矩的人，没有规矩不成方圆嘛，尤其欣赏美妙的规矩，比如数学的定理、Magento 的框架——又扯远了。PayPal 定的规矩，大部分是合理的，否则 PayPal 也不会做大。但这次被它的规矩套进去，我总有点不是滋味（虽然不是我的钱），只能敬告我自己：PayPal 邮件要封封读，或者帐户要日日看。

  • Surcharge on card payment in Magento

    I just searched for a solution to surcharge customers for a certain PSP in Magento. The only thing I could find a module which priced at USD 49. I also found a lot of argument about whether card payment surcharge is illegal or against PSP’s policy, to which I do not care. What I do care is a free and easy solution to do the job.

    Looking at Promotions -> Shopping Cart Price Rules, we can give discount for some kinds of payment method. But the discount can not be minus, which makes it work as surcharge. However, Magento only validates discount must be positive when saving a shopping cart price rule to database. It does not validate again when applying this rule. Therefore, we can make up a rule, enter discount with a positive value, then change the value to minus in database. That’s all you need to do to surcharge customers.

    By the way, I think Magento validation on discount limits its usability. Why not use the salesrule module for both promotions and surcharges? I really like to see the menu Promotions be replaced by Sales Rules. (The word salesrule is already being used as table name and in script.)

  • PayPal Spoof

    PayPal Looks Like Phishing
    An email from PayPal: looks like phishing

    I had an email from PayPal a while ago. I believe it was sent by some careless staff of PayPal.

    PayPal always remind people aware of phishing emails. At the bottom of the email, it says – How do I know this is not a spoof email? Spoof or ‘phishing’ emails tend to have generic greetings such as “Dear PayPal member”. Email from PayPal will always address you by your first and last name.

    However, this particular email address me “Dear First Name Last Name”.

  • Cross-browser CSS

    Today I did something CSS cross-browser testing. Here are some of my findings today.

    • Validate Xhtml / Html before styling. I put form element between table and tr element which make it an invalid xhtml document and cause CSS rendering in a strange way in IE. (IE is generally bad in W3C standards but this time it is good – it reminds me to validate xhtml.)
    • -webkit-border-fit:lines

      is for Sarifi and Chrome only, making elements “shrink”, even block elements.
      > selector can’t be understand by IE6 and under.

    • Few people are using IE5.5 or under, so I decide not to bother about layout in IE5.5 or under.
    • Block elements have overflow by default to show in IE6, So if I want to set the height of a block element, I need also set 
      overflow:hidden
    • Cleaning elements with 
      clear:both

      to clear floating elements above better be placed inside the same parent element of floating elements, otherwise in IE6, the elements after cleaning elements will not align nicely. for example:

      
<div class="parent-element">
    <div class="floating-element">...</div>
    <div class="floating-element">...</div>
    <div class="cleaning-element">&nbsp;</div>
</div>

  • Open Office惨不忍睹

    虽然我是 open source 的拥护者，但有人说 Open office 惨不忍睹，我也不得不承认。

    在 Open Office Writer for Linux 下，按下 Ctrl + C 企图拷贝“邮编”这两个字，程序就死了。我试了好几次，Open Office 每次都死。这种毛病也真稀奇。

  • How Google group conversation is a mystery

    我用一个 Google 邮箱 pop 另一个 Google 邮箱的1139封会话。Pop 结束后，接收方显示只有 1125封会话。当时我以为是某些会话没有 Pop 成功。经过一番核对，发现老邮箱里独立的某些会话，在新邮箱里被合并成一个会话。

    于是我对 Google 合并会话的条件算法产生了兴趣，又经过一番搜索，发现 Google 对此算法讳莫如深。其实这算法有很大缺陷，Feature request 讨论组里对手工分拆和合并会话的呼声就很高。我也很想要这个功能。

  • Half constructed Magento objects

    Magento 对象有个半构造状态。称之为半构造或许不恰当，但我一时找不到更合适的词来表达。

    先说一个我以前碰到的问题：为什么在产品列表里的产品取不到自定义属性的值？因为此时产品处于半构造状态，半构造状态默认不加载自定义属性。只有在某产品所在的那一产品页，该产品才处于全构造状态。Magento 对象半构造主要是照顾速度。

    再说另一个问题：甲产品是一个 bundled product，bundled items 里只有一个 option，该 option 里只有一个 selection，该 selection 是 20 件乙产品。我不明白 Magento 创造这么多名词干嘛，又是 option，又是 selection，暂且不管它，就按 Magento 层层 wrapper 来办。在甲产品的产品页上，要取得捆绑数量（20），可以这么办——

    $_product = $this->getProduct(); //$_product is 甲产品
$_option = current($_product->getOptions());  //because only one option
$_selection = current($_option->getSelections()); //because only one selection
$_qty = $_selection->getSelectionQty();

    如果甲产品是乙产品的相关产品，在乙产品的产品页上，要取得相关产品甲产品的捆绑数量，就无法按上述思路办，这是因为此时甲产品处于半构造状态。那么换个思路，这么来——

    $_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku',$sku); //$_product is 甲产品
$_productType = $_product->getTypeInstance();
$_optionCollection = $_productType->getOptionsCollection();
$_selectionCollection = $_productType->getSelectionsCollection($_productType->getOptionsIds());
$_option = current($_optionCollection->appendSelections($_selectionCollection));
$_selection = current($_option->getSelections());

    以上代码微妙之处就在$_option = current($_optionCollection->appendSelections($_selectionCollection));，它把半构造状态的甲产品进一步prepare，于是就有了selections。

  • SERVER_NAME vs HTTP_HOST

    If server_name is something like “*.mydomain.com”, $server_name is exactly “*.mydomain.com”. If $server_name is passed on to fastcgi_param as SERVER_NAME, in the program, for example, php $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’] will be exactly “*.mydomain.com”. However, _SERVER[“HTTP_HOST”] shows the value most of us would expect, i.e. the host name in the address bar.

    In Nginx, I have set up a mechanism to install some popular scripts once, and use in multiple websites. I do not want people to find these websites are run under one roof. But if I write multiple websites in one line:

    
server_name domain1.com domain2.com domain3.com;

    $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’] is always assigned domain1.com no matter the host is domain2.com or domain3.com.

    To avoid that, I have to break three websites into three server block in nginx.

    $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] is always the host. But I can not control how people write the script. Breaking hosts into separate server blocks is recommended.

  • Nautilus mount

    Nautilus is quite good, easy to use in regards to its mount feature. It can automatically “mount” Windows Share via smb:// protocol. However, some software, e.g. FileZilla (now 3.2.4.1) can not read from or write to smb:// protocol. A genuine Linux mount is more helpful than Nautilus mount.

  • Problem with newly created accounts at Google Apps Mail

    I had a very bad day yesterday with Google Apps Mail. This service is good overall, but this time was exception.

    I newly set up a Google Apps account and created several user accounts last Friday. I used my administrator account to login and did some settings. Yesterday when other users wanted to login Google Apps Mail, they encountered this error:

    The page isn’t redirecting properly

    Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

    * This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
    cookies.

    The symptom was – Google was jumping between www.google.com and mail.google.com in an endless loop. I tried various browsers on different machines and had the same problem. Only Google Apps Mail was affected, while Google Apps Calendar, Documents and Sites were all right. And only user accounts created last Friday but never login until Monday were affected, while my account and newly created test account on Monday were all right.

    I tried all suggested solutions in vain –

    • clear cookies
    • restart browser, even machines
    • disable and re-enable Mail, Docs service
    • login as a mobile user
    • change “passive” and “rm” parameters in redirecting url

    I tried to report this problem to Google but found nowhere to report (just because it is a free standard account?) I suppose it was a synchronisation problem among Google millions servers, which could be solved by itself giving time. However I was not sure of the time scale, so the final solution came up at the cost of losing incoming emails during weekends –

    I deleted user accounts and re-create them. (Here comes another episode – Google won’t allow a newly deleted account being created within 5 days. The workaround is creating another user account and aliasing the old one.)