HikaShop Business - eCommerce for Joomla 6.0.0

HikaShop 4.7.0​

Release date : November, 18 2022

Bug fixes (42)​

• The generation of thumbnails could, in some cases generate a deprecated message on PHP 8.1
• In some rare cases, after products from a warehouse would be removed from the cart, the checkout would require a new validation of the shipping method selection before allowing the finishing of the checkout process.
• We fixed the compatibility between the Shipping Estimation plugin and the Australia Post v2 shipping plugin.
• We fixed an error on the frontend which could happen when the minimum quantity per order configured in the product would be higher than the maximum quantity per order and the product's quantity input would be configured as "show select" (a dropdown).
• HTML tags could potentially appear in the option dropdown on the product details page in some rare situations.
• In some rare cases, displaying a cart in the backend where the user had already selected the UPS shipping method but had, for some reason no country selected in his shipping address could result in an error.
• We've added some extra check to make sure a payment plugin won't process a payment in the onBeforeOrderCreate event if a previous plugin has asked to cancel the creation of the order.
• The hreflang tags generated in the headers of the pages by the system languagefilter plugin of Joomla could be incorrect on listings and product details pages if different canonical URLs would be provided for each language for the category/product. Our fix prevents that from happening.
• The imported orders could have empty addresses with VirtueMart in some cases.
• After importing orders with shipping methods not available in HikaShop, an error would happen on PHP8 when displaying the order details in the backend.
• When creating a new cart/wishlist in the backend, it was possible on PHP 8 and in some special cases, to generate a fatal error.
• We fixed warnings messages on PHP8 with Joomla 3 on the frontend when products / categories wouldn't have an image defined for them.
• The coupon value could be incorrect in some rare cases for coupons with the handling mode set to "override discounted products" and with several products taken into account by the coupon.
• We fixed a warning when creating a new payment method following an improvement we've added in the 4.6.2.
• We improved the installation of embedded plugins so that no warning would appear later on on PHP8 when sorting the Joomla extensions listing.
• The import of product translations now handles properly the texts with line returns or double quotes.
• In some cases the "display errors" setting of the shipping view of the checkout workflow wouldn't be taken into account properly.
• The "Product quantity from" setting of the coupons would not work properly in some cases.
• The extra blocks of the product edit page were not added to the variants form.
• The reset button for the product edit page customization was not reseting the variant form customization.
• The label of the image width in the menu item options had been wrongly changed to the block layout label of the option above it.
• The fix added in HikaShop 4.6.2 to properly load the overrides for controllers and classses could result, in some rare cases in the wrong template being loaded on some pages of the frontend when the geolocation plugn would be used with its "after initialize" setting being activated.
• We've added a fix to properly support the "invoice shop image address" setting being empty.
• In some cases with several shipping/payment methods the taxes might be not properly taken into account during the calculations in the cart / checkout.
• The language switcher integration now takes into account the custom sef name of the languages when set.
• When using the VM2 import with a table prefix for the VM tables, it would result in an error during the import of the addresses.
• Deleting the selected date in some options of the backend was not working on recent versions of Joomla 3 on some websites.
• There was a conflict between the library included in the PayPal Checkout plugin and the header automatically added to the PHP files during the packaging process of HikaShop which resulted sometimes in a fatal error when using the PayPal checkout plugin.
• The XML of the HikaShop dashboard module could cause issues with the error reporting activated when installing other extensions on Joomla 4 following a change in HikaShop 4.6.2
• Removing all the selected category from a limit wouldn't be taken into account when saving the limit.
• We fixed a warning on the publish/unpublish toggle of the shipping/payment methods on PHP8.
• The uninstallation of HikaShop modules could generate a Fatal error on Joomla 4.2 with PHP 8 as the client attribute was not present in the manifest file.
• The title of the wishlist page could be incorrect in some cases.
• When indexing products in the Smart Search component on PHP8, if a variant was pointing to a non existing product, it would generate a fatal error, stopping the process.
• The RSS and Atom fees would generate an error on Joomla 4.
• The back button on the cart page will now correctly use the current menu Item.
• The error messages on the password rules now display with the proper translation on Joomla 4.
• The cookie modification in 4.6.2 to improve FireFox compatibility could lead to a fatal error on some versions of PHP.
• The best customer reports could generate an error on PHP8 when no orders would be found.
• The "move to new wishlist" action on the frontend cart/wishlist page didn't work properly.
• In some rare circumstances, the use of the coupon free product plugin could lead to a MySQL query error when adding a product to the cart.
• We fixed an error which could happen if you had configured the "user group after purchase" setting in at least one product of the order being confirmed and the HikaShop group plugin would be enabled without its settings having being saved once in the past on PHP8.

Improvements (35)​

• We've improved the robustness of the translation mechanism, especially when the original text strarts with a number.
• It is now possible to add HTML in the "Format" setting of currencies. This can potentially allow you to separate the price and the currency inside different spans with a format like this for example: <span class="symbol">€</span><span class="price">%!n</span>
• We've added an horizontal scrolling capability to the backend screens so that if the content needs a bigger width (like the order status listing page on small screens) it will allow you to scroll to see everything instead of going outside of the area.
• We've added a new order status "returned" by default.
• The publish & unpublish buttons on backend listings now have colors.
• The Google Products plugin's menu item setting now uses a menu item selector instead of an input field in order to make it easier for the user to choose a menu item for the plugin.
• The "Redirect Joomla registration to HikaShop plugin"'s setting is now a menu item selector instead of an input field so that you can more easily choose a menu item for it instead of having to search for the id of the menu item in the Joomla menu manager. We've also improved the tooltip for that setting to properly explain what the setting does.
• We've changed the order of loading so that shipping plugins are loaded before payment plugins so that shipping plugins can cancel an order creation before a payment plugin could potentially process a payment.
• We've added a new event onBeforeUserListing for the user listing in the backend. This will allow plugins to be able to modify the MySQL query loading the users there and add extra filters on the listing page, similarly to what's already possible on the orders listing.
• The cart view of the Checkout workflow editor is now on two columns as it now has a lot of options. Incidentally, plugins adding extra blocks can now have their options in two columns with the "separator" type.
• We improved the check database mechanism so that it works fine when plugins add new columns to the database during an update.
• We've modified the class of the area for the additionals in the notification emails so that it's now possible to add CSS for only one additional without affecting the others.
• The Google Products plugin now automatically provide the sale_price in the XML if a discount is applied on the price of the product. That way, Google will get both the price without discount and the price with discount and will be able advertise the products as being on sale.
• We now force the capture of the money in "test mode" with the WorldPay Business gateway to make it easier to test payments with it.
• It's now possible to use hikashop_getLayout for the layout of a hikashop plugin.
• The close button for error messages on the frontend now also support Bootstrap 5.
• We improved the error handling in the PayPal Checkout payment plugin.
• We added extra data to the cart.empty javascript event so that developers can know what has been changed in the cart when it is emptied.
• We've added a hidden option "form_custom" to be able to disable the form custom mechanism on the product edit page in case you don't need it and it create some problems.
• The geolocation plugin is now deactivated by default to avoid doing useless processing on the pages when not necessary.
• When the cart is being modified on the checkout, we now provide the data of the modified products to the javascript event so that third party javascript can use it.
• We changed the "none" text of the tax category setting of variants to "as parent product" to better reflect the behavior of the system.
• We now always display the thumbnails for the listing block layouts with "image" in their name, even if the "thumbnails" setting of the HikaShop configuration is turned off.
• We've added the Central Bank of Russia in the list of available exchange rates feeds of the HikaShop rates auto update plugin.
• We now force the creation of the address format override if missing in the template as long as it is different from the default in HikaShop. That way, when you change the template, as long as you save the HikaShop configuration once, it will add the address format override for it, instead of letting you believe it did while it didn't do it.
• We've added a failsafe for the loading of the JavaScript libraries on Joomla 4 so that if something tries to load them before the web asset manager is loaded, it will wait to load them later on.
• We've added the support for brands restriction for discounts.
• Payment and shipping plugins can now have tooltips added to their options.
• We've added a new event onGetCartProductsInfo(&$cart, &$ret) so that plugins can pass custom information to the javascript when responding to an add to cart AJAX request or a cart update AJAX request.
• We changed the type of the field_default column in the hikashop_field table so that you can now write a text bigger than 255 characters in the default setting of custom fields.
• We've improved the look of the PayPal Checkout buttons at the end of the checkout.
• The RedShop import is not compatible with RedShop 3 (it would require writing a whole new import) so we've updated the text of the interface in HikaShop to reflect that.
• We've added a "position" and an "icon" attributes to the additional deletable parameter so that plugins adding additionals to the cart can choose the placing of the delete icon and the icon to use.
• We added the taxation_id of the created tax rule for the onAfterTaxationCreate event so that plugins can more easily act upon a tax rule creation.
• The password checks now also support the "minimum lowercase" setting and also checks for spaces at the beginning or end and check the max length to replicate all of Joomla's new checks.
• We've added jpeg, svg and webp as default file extensions allowed for new installations of HikaShop.
• We've removed the swf extension as default file extensions allowed for new installations of HikaShop as it has become obsolete.

New features (9)​

• We've added a new "format" option for custom fields of the type "text", "textarea" and "WYSIWYG" so that you can prepend/append text around the value provided in the field when displaying the value of the field. This can be quite useful. For example, if you want to display a tracking URL in your emails, you can use a custom order field where you just provide the tracking number and use that format setting to add the HTML of the link around the tracking number.
• We've reworked the order additional information edit popup so that it is clear what each input field is for and also improved the price / tax fields so that it is easier to use, without the need to manually calculate taxes.
• We've updated the order product create/edit form popup on the order details page of the backend. We removed the tax input field and added instead a "price with tax" setting. That way, you don't have to manually calculate the tax when you want another price than the price by default. We also automatically calculate the price with tax based on the price without tax and the tax rate selected and vice-versa.
• When options have several prices for different minimum quantities, the system will dynamically refresh the price displayed in the option dropdown/radio and will now also take it into account for the "price with options" display based on the quantity entered by the user in the quantity input field.
• We've added a new option "Funding" to the PayPal checkout plugin so that you can select the payment methods you would like to be available to your customers if eligible (like Pay Later, bancontact, etc).
• The input and select elements on the frontend now use the classes of Joomla 4 when using Joomla 4 instead of HikaShop's custom classes. We've made a system using constants which can be overridden either with options from the HikaShop configuration or plugins with the new event onHikashopDefineConstants.
• The password fields on the different registration forms of HikaShop now display similarly to Joomla 4, with the requirement meter.
• We have added new templates to allow you to change colors of your HikaShop emails, and select a new design to match your website style without having to modify the CSS of the emails default template.
• We have add a new options to allow to add icon in the cart module view.

HikaShop 4.6.2​

Release date : September, 21 2022

Bug fixes (38)​

• There was an error with the CardSave payment plugin on PHP 8.
• In some rare cases, the delete button of the cart module would not work properly.
• When following the "Display by color" tutorial, the colors wouldn't hide/display with the "Characteristics dynamic display" setting activated in the HikaShop configuration.
• We fixed an error with the add to cart when using AJAX file custom fields in some cases with PHP 8.
• The search feature could potentially break the HTML of the download button on the downloads listing of the frontend.
• We fixed some warning message which could appear if the data stored in the database for the values of a custom field is invalid.
• Accessing a menu item of the type HikaShop product comparison would generate an error on Joomla 4.
• PHP 8 could generate errors during calculations if there were too many decimals on the numbers.
• The custom user fields are now displayed properly on the Joomla profile edit page on the frontend for Joomla 4.
• We fixed some warnings with the order detail page in the backend when the address custom fields would be all disabled.
• We fixed a deprecated message on PHP 8 with the cart module when its settings were not saved once before being displays on the frontend.
• helpers / controllers / classes overrides (for custom development) are now working properly on Joomla 4.
• The Joomla language switcher module could output invalid URLs if the menu item used wouldn't have associated menu items for each languages on some pages.
• We fixed an error which could happen on PHP 8 when a currency rate was set to 0 and the system was trying to convert a price from that currency to another currency.
• When using the pagination number of elements per page dropdown on the entries listing in the backend, the entries wouldn't display anymore on the listing.
• The "update the values" action could generate a "wrong type for this column" error in some cases with the "string" mode selected.
• With many options it would be possible to have a conflict between two of them on the same product page leading to an option not refreshing the price of the product properly.
• We fixed the country name for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• We fixed a deprecated message with filters on PHP 8.1.
• We remove special characters when looking for product names from the alias in the URL in the router to avoid regex MySQL errors.
• The filter selection on the filter module settings page can now handle more than 50 filters.
• We fixed a deprecated message on PHP 8 with custom text fields when the value is null in the database.
• The variants display on the products listing would aggregate all the values of all the products on the page instead of only the values of each product individually.
• We've fixed a warning in some rare cases with the thumbnails display on the product details page.
• We fixed a warning relative to the translation files loading.
• We fixed an issue with the product edit interface and Joomla 4.2 related to tags.
• The modification of the description of variants didn't work properly on Joomla 4 in some cases.
• The first parameter of the onBeforeConfigSave event was not set properly by HikaShop.
• When the "synchronized add to cart with cart" setting was activated while using the "tabular" layout, the add to cart wouldn't work properly.
• The cart synchronization didn't work well with multiple dropdown, radio and checkbox custom item fields.
• The characteristic values were not translated properly when using the "radio" display mode.
• The translation popup of variants would display an error with the "Alias automatic filling" setting turned on even though it was working.
• We've fixed a warning when deleting orders in the backend in some rare cases.
• The limits didn't save properly in the backend interface since HikaShop 4.6.0
• The toggle icons would display for the category translation popup even when Falang was not used to handle the translations while they should not appear.
• The French and Russian translation files had a wrong translation key which would override the email sent by Joomla to the admin after a registration, which would create a problem on Joomla 4.
• The actions "Change status", "Add an existing product" and "Change user group" didn't display properly their options until you saved the settings of the mass action.
• We added a fix to properly take into account the custom data of shipping methods in some cases.

Improvements (43)​

• It is now possible to use the lowest tax rate for shipping fees.
• The brand selector on the product edit page now displays as a tree as brands can be in several levels.
• There is a new option to the FedEx shipping method to select the environment.
• You can now use a comma as a decimal separator when entering the "Retail price" or when importing the "product_msrp" column.
• The privacy consent integration now supports the "menu item" mode.
• We changed the default "Frequency of the check for the carts" for new installations from 1 days to 20 minutes so that even on websites with many carts created by users, the system can still keep up with deleting the old carts.
• Seletable filters will now be automatically hidden from display when there is no value to select in them.
• We now display boolean custom fields following Joomla 4's style on Joomla 4.
• We've added the support of the privacy consent plugin to the registration form displayed when you click on the link to register in the order notification emails after you placed an order as a guest if the corresponding option is activated.
• We've added an "empty the cart" button to the cart detail page.
• We've added "product_files" and "product_images" as reserved field column names as they are used internally and would create problems if used for a custom field.
• Plugins can now add extra fields on the characteristic edit form in the backend.
• The checkout login view will now display Joomla 4's social buttons (login with Google, Facebook, WebAuth, etc) mechanism. That way, users don't have to go through the registration procedure if social buttons are available (for example if they are added by Akeeba SocialLogin extension: https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/akeeba-sociallogin/ )
• Payment plugin developers can now add an attribute "needCallbackFile" to their plugin class to have a callback file automatically created for them at the root of the website and they can use $this->getCallbackFilename() to get the filename. This can be used when the payment gateway restricts the number of characters or some special characters like ?, & or = for the callback URL for the payment notification. That way, when that callback file is called, it will automatically trigger their plugin's onPaymentNotification function.
• We added a canonical URL header to the contact form page to make sure it's not flagged as duplicate content.
• The orders created with taxes calculated by the TaxCloud plugin can now be modified in the HikaShop backend without loosing the tax information calculated by TaxCloud.
• When the "synchronized add to cart" setting is activated in the HikaShop configuration is activated, you can directly update the quantity of the product from the "add to cart" button area on products listings and product details pages. So far even when reducing the quantity of the product in the cart, the notification box message would be "Product successfully added to the cart". We improved the system so that when the quantity is reduced it says instead "Product successfully removed from the cart" in order to improve user experience.
• There is now a link back to the product details page on the product name of the product contact form.
• If the stock of one of the selected options is not enough (or another limitation is hit for it), if the "group options with product" setting is activated in the HikaShop configuration, the add to cart of the whole product will be cancelled.
• We've added the SameSite attribute to the cart and session cookies to avoid a warning to be displayed in the console of FireFox.
• We now separate the "save" and the "save and close" buttons in the backend on Joomla 4 instead of having them stacked.
• We've added logging capabilities to the "AIM" mode of the Authorize.net payment plugin.
• We now allow HTML tags in the footer of the PDF generated by the PDF invoice plugin.
• We've improved the code loading the custom fields on products listing to avoid errors with custom code in some rare cases.
• We added a decimal to the exchange rate for new installations of HikaShop to be able to handle 6 decimals instead of 5.
• We've added a hidden setting called redirect_url_when_registration_form_access_while_already_logged so that you can override the URL where the user will be redirected if he tries to access the HikaShop registration form while already logged in.
• When the multilanguage edit mechanism is activated, for languages other than English, when HikaShop is being initialized, we now reload all the already loaded translation files without the English overrides so that English translation overrides don't interfer with the original texts of the HikaShop content when the base language of the content is another language than English.
• The PayFast payment plugin included in HikaShop has been removed from HikaShop's install package. PayFast offers their own version of the plugin and it conflicts with it. People already using our version will still be able to continue using it even after updating their HikaShop. But new installations of HikaShop won't have the plugin added anymore and they'll be able to get it from PayFast.
• We've added a new javascript event hkCustomFieldChanged which will be triggered when a custom field is modified.
• Changing custom item fields on the product details page now triggers the hkContentChanged javascript event.
• Plugins can now inject headers into emails in the onBeforeMailPrepare event by adding their headers to $mail->extraHeaders.
• We've removed the SEO fields from the translation popup of variants as they don't make sense there.
• We've added extra data display to the user edit form on the backend so that plugins can add extra elements to that interface.
• We've improved the javascript loading mechanism so that on Joomla 4, it will skip it if the web asset manager has not yet been initialized by Joomla.
• We've improved the categories filters so that if no category is selected, we still only display product categories in the filter as it doesn't make sense to display other category types.
• It is now possible to configure transparent stripes for image thumbnails.
• We improved the email history rendering of the emails to properly display images when added to the email as background-image.
• We removed the "add new value" button for the "default" setting of custom fields as it doesn't work properly and is not necessary there.
• We added an error message if the admin tries to use the "allow new value" setting while using his own MySQL query to load the values of a custom field as that's not possible.
• We improved the reminder plugin so that for cart reminders the plugin takes into account the last modification date of orders (and not only the creation date) and to also use the "cart waiting period" as a buffer so that if an order was created/modified for that user less than that period of time (1 day by default) before the last cart modification we also don't send a reminder.
• We've added a "make this address default" checkbox to the address form on the checkout when necessary to make it easier for the user and avoid having to go to the address manager to change the default address.
• We've added some failsafe for reports not properly initialized in order to not get an error when editing the report.
• We added a patch for the compatibility with 4SEF (successor of SH404SEF).
• HikaShop will now trigger the events onPrepareModuleList, onAfterModuleList and onAfterCleanModuleList for the modules loaded under the product page so that other extensions, like Advanced Modules Manager can process them.

New features (7)​

• The translation mechanism now supports non latin languages for the original language with a new setting for it under the Languages tab of the HikaShop configuration.
• The UPS plugin has a new option to be able to select between the production environment and the test environment.
• We've added the "Sofinco" bank to the PayBox payment plugin.
• The variants can now have their own tax category, overriding the main product's.
• We added two settings in the HikaShop configuration to be able to enter your logo URL so that it will be added to the invoices generated by HikaShop.
• We've added a new PayPal Checkout payment plugin to HikaShop. With it, you'll be able to use the latest "PayPal Checkout" offered by PayPal.
• We've added a new option "Email favicon" under the Emails section of the HikaShop configuration so that you can configure a favicon to customize further the emails to your branding.